There are plans for another new skyscraper along the Chicago River.

The latest proposal is at 527 West Kinzie Street. You may know this location as the pie-shaped surface parking lot favored by 20-somethings taking gritty urban pictures of their avant-garde fashions to fill out their art school portfolios. Or you may know it as the pie-shaped surface parking lot just behind the Harry Weese’s beloved River Cottages along the North Branch of the river. Or you may have stood in this parking lot taking pictures of the old William J. Cassidy Tire Company warehouse, back when we we thought it was going to be replaced by a new skyscraper at any minute now.

The new plan is from Vornado, the company that used to sell me rust-colored corduroy dungarees when I was a child, but is now a billion-dollar real estate developer.

Vornado’s new building on the southwest corner of West Kinzie Street and North Canal Street is expected to be 26-stories tall, with 288 new homes for people, and 81 new homes for their cars. This is significantly smaller than the maximums that City Council approved for this space back in June of 2020, so the design does not need any further approval.

Because of the curving Chicago and North Western train tracks bordering the south side of this property, the building footprint will retain the parking lot’s pie shape. This will be most visible in the parking podium pool patio’s prow. Believe it or not, that rail line is still not officially abandoned, and there are people who still believe that one day it will live up to its potential ferrying commuters and tourists between Union Station and the Magnificent Mile. The Cubs won a world series, so anything can happen in Chicago.

So what ever happened to the 33-story SCB-designed residential skyscraper that was supposed to be next door replacing the tire warehouse? According to a recent e-mail from 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly, that is still coming. It was approved by City Council almost 20 moons ago, but as far as we’ve seen, no permits have been issued for it yet.

• Address: 527 West Kinzie Street
• Developer: Vornado Realty Trust
• Architecture firm: Pappageorge Haymes
• Floors: 26
• Size: 249, 338 square feet (330,000 maximum allowed)
• Floor area ratio: 9.5 (12.6 maximum allowed)
• Height
  • Maximum: 290 feet (365 allowed)
  • Mechanical penthouse: 285 feet (340 allowed)
  • Roof: 275 feet, 11 inches
• Residences: 288
• Average residence size: 833 square feet
• Parking
  • Automobile: 81 spaces (228 maximum allowed)
  • Bicycle: 200 spaces
• Loading docks: One

The plan for 170 North Green Street has been tweaked before; most recently in 2017. The 2022 version is much taller, and better looking than what was presented back then. Much like your high school boyfriend.

The building’s height has gone from 210 feet to 470 feet. The number of apartments has been reduced from 314 to 275, but a hotel and office space have been added. Also, the new architect on this one is the Lamar Johnson Collaborative. Here’s the revised details of this revised project:

• Address: 170 North Green Street
• Zoning: RBPD 1354 → DX-7 → RBPD 1354 (amended)
• Architecture firm: Lamar Johnson Collaborative
• Net site area: 62,600 square feet
• Floor area ratio: 11.5 (7.0 base + 4.5 bonus)
• Floors: 40
• Height
  • Maximum: 470 feet
  • Roof: 455 feet
• Tower setback: 14th floor/182 feet
• Maximum residences: 275
• Affordable housing obligation: 55 units
• Parking
  • Automobile: 235 spaces
  • Bicycle: 97 spaces
• Loading docks: 2

McHugh just spent nine straight hours pouring concrete into a hole at 1000 South Michigan Avenue, completing the foundation for what will eventually be a 788-foot-tall apartment building. Suck it, haters.

Not that there hasn’t been plenty of 1000M angst in the Windy City. We’ve all had the oogies watching the building get repeatedly redesigned, resized, and re-started. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned from the Waterview Tower, and the Chicago Spire, it’s “don’t count your skyscrapers until they’re built.”

Still, it’s a major step forward in realizing the late Helmut Jahn’s vision for this space, and if it’s completed as he intended, its location will make it one of the most prominent buildings in the city’s skyline, even though it will only be 18th in rank.

“But wait,” we hear you say. “It’s only 788 feet tall now? And only 73 stories?” Yes, those are the numbers being used by McHugh Concrete. Apparently revised downward once again. And since McHugh has its hands on the plans, those are the numbers we’re working with right now.

Until the building is complete, and we can be certain of its stature, concentrate on these concrete factoids instead:

• The foundation pour involved 4,000 cubic yards of concrete.
• The concrete came in 400 truckloads.
• The foundation includes 685 tons of steel rebar.
• The foundation’s caissons are 87 feet deep.

Think French farmers with shotguns who didn’t want the Eurostar zipping through their fields. Or Texas dirt ranchers who think high-speed rail is an infringement on their freedom. Or, in Chicago, where there are a number of places where what is now the CTA had to bend its rails to the will of people or places in the way.

Two of those bends will soon be history.

Like a cat stretching after a good nap, the CTA held a ceremonial groundbreaking yesterday for a project to work out the kinks in the Red and Purple Lines just north of the Belmont station.

You’ve seen the CTA at work here recently. A few months ago, it opened a magnificent, if slightly scary, new flyover to fly the Brown Line over the Red and Purple lines when it has to make a left turn on its journey northward. Previously, Red and Purple traffic would come to a standstill while the Brown put on its blinker, waited for the all-clear, and inched slowly across two other sets of tracks. It was a built-in excuse for being late coming home from work.

Today, Red and Purple trains can move northward and southward without being interrupted by their Brown buddies. But that doesn’t mean it’s a completely smooth ride through the Lake View neighborhood. There’s the problem of a pair of bends in the line which force the trains to slow down and jog eastward, then west again as they cross Clark Street.

But don’t blame Chicago’s favorite sportsball-themed drunkenness zone. The sway in the way was caused a hundred-and-something years ago by the Vautravers Building, an 1894 apartment building that refused to bend to the will of the mighty Northwestern Elevated Railroad. It took forever and a day, but the CTA finally got its way, buying and demolishing 14 properties in the line of fire, and last year came in with cranes and trucks and noise to shove the now-historic apartment building 30 feet to the left.

Next month, the entire third-of-a-mile stretch of transit will be yanked down and rebuilt, starting with the southbound side over the next two years. Then the northbound side after that. The whole thing is expected to be finished in 2025.

Eleven levels isn’t all that much when it comes to Chicago construction, but being hard up against a set of Metra tracks and a block-and-a-half off of Fulton Market, 11 stories is pretty good for a piece of what is essentially urban infill.

Since this is a SOM design, we shouldn’t be surprised that mere “infill” has been elevated to elegant. Like many of its neighbors, it is reminiscent of the repurposed brick warehouses and soft lofts that have opened in the area recently. But 345 manages to be better. The renderings show it with lots of glass and natural light. The double-height archways of the first floor are repeated at the top of the building, below a rooftop event space. Instead of wide expanses of glass, we get more human-scale grouped panes. It could be a bank. It could be a bookstore. It could be anything, and that’s reason enough to like it. It is sophisticated without being stuffy.

About the only place this building falls down is at the lower level brick wall facing the train tracks. It’s punctured by a half-dozen uneventful windows, seemingly located at random. From the outside, it’s a branding opportunity missed. From the inside, seeing the passenger trains creep by (because at this point in the ride, they do indeed creep), would have injected energy and whimsy into the space in a way that few other things could.

To be sure, the gulf between renderings and reality is as wide as Upper Peoria Lake, and twice as ugly. But we have high hopes for this one, simply because of its pedigree.

The new structure will climb to 600 feet, and house 500 apartments, and a 200-room hotel. It’s part of a three-building complex expected to wipe away any memories of the food distributors who used to call this block home. Many of them decamped for the Pilsen/Bridgeport area when the property was put into play back in the year David Bowie records suddenly became very hard to get.

The other two buildings are 25-story and 10-story office buildings. The smaller of the two sports a gabled roof that is kinda-sorta reminiscent of the Loyola University Law Center. The larger one is the stack of glass blocks atop a soft loft podium that is becoming a recurring theme in downtown Chicago.

This new plan replaces a much smaller three-building plan that we told you about back in 2016, and another three-building plan that we told you about in 2019. With a new developer, and new architecture firm, we’ll see if the third time is the charm for three-building plans.

We waded through the “advance solutions,” “authentic conversations,” “springboards to inquiry,” and “informed conservation solutions” nonsense in the Shedd’s press release about the renovation, and here’s the facts distilled in plain, non-Medill, English:

• New exhibits
• Modernized galleries
• “Dedicated community spaces” — Which could be anything.
• “Digital engagements” — Which probably means streaming video and maybe some web stuff. VR, maybe, if that really does become a thing in a decade or two.
• “Advancements in… animal care and welfare” — This should have been first on the list.
• Improved animal habitats for the 25,000 things that live there today.
• Better accessibility
• “Increase Shedd’s capacity to respond to more wildlife in crisis” — You’re gonna need a bigger boat.
• More research
• Better landscaping
• Restoration of the historic galleries

We’ll be sad if any of the historic galleries are changed too much. Walking through them with wide eyes, you see more than the fish. You can discern the way that people of the Shedd’s founding era viewed wildlife and brought it to the middle west. Some of the Shedd’s interiors are as much time capsules as the exterior is.

Also of significance to building nerds like us is the promise that the Shedd is going to re-open the windows that formerly allowed skyline views of downtown Chicago, and of Lake Michigan, from the Museum Campus.

The building renovation is being designed by Valerio Dewalt Train. Thinc Design is on critter patrol.

Don’t get your flippers in a flap just yet. The renovation is expected to take six years. Or eight years. We’ve heard both from the Shedd. So mark down both 2026 and 2030 to see the shiny new Shedd.

Long story short: A piece of the 100-story building’s facade broke off and fell onto the sidewalk below. It’s natural to try to rationalize that kind of behavior with thoughts like “Well, it’s just metal fatigue…” or “It’s an old building, things happen.” If you’re the kind of person who thinks this is not a big deal, take a deep breath. Close your eyes. And repeat after me: “A chunk… of a 100-story skyscraper… fell on the sidewalk.” Yes, it’s a big deal.

How big a deal this is will be left up to 875 North Michigan’s tenants, residents, insurance company, and hopefully the City of Chicago.

Stuff falling off of 875 isn’t unheard of.

On March 9th of 2002, high winds tore apart a scaffold hanging on the side of the building. The debris killed two woman, hurt eight other people, and crushed two cars.

Also, in the winter, sometimes ice accumulates on the side of the building, and on the two antenna masts on the roof. When the ice starts to melt, sometimes great avalanches of ice will slide down the sides of the sloped building, breaking windows. According to WGN-TV meteorologist Tom Skilling, the air at the top of the building is six degrees cooler than the air at ground level.

Replacing the windows in the former John Hancock Center is pretty straightforward. Most of them simply unbolt. Such a window replacement is how we were able to lean out of an apartment window and take tummy-tingling pictures of the street below.

Checking our sister site, Chicago Architecture Info, yields the following interesting information about 875 North Michigan:

• 57 of this building’s caissons are sunk 200 feet into the ground, almost to the locaL bedrock. The other 182 go down as far as 88 feet.
• In 1966, construction was halted for six months while the building’s caissons were inspected for flaws at a cost of $1,000,000. Two of the caissons had developed voids in them. Three others had foreign material in them. All five had to be repaired.
• Comedian Chris Farley died in his apartment (#6002) on the 60th floor of this building on December 18, 1997.
• A 20-foot-tall star used to be suspended between the building’s antennae during the Christmas season.
• The exterior of the building’s 98th floor is lined with 500 eight-foot-tall lights. Colored tubes are put over them by hand to change the colors.
• There is a time capsule at the top of the building. Among the items inside is a piece of Paris’ Eiffel Tower, sports and space memorabilia, and a letter from Mayor Richard J. Daley.
• In the film National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, this was the location of Mr. Shirley’s office.

From personal experience, we can say that the former John Hancock Center is one of the best-maintained buildings we’ve ever lived in. And we lived in more skyscrapers than Liz Taylor’s had husbands. But as we’ve written before, the tower isn’t without its flaws. Primary among them, for residents, is the fact that it’s on the lakefront. Where it’s windy a lot. And the building sways in the wind. And when it does, the residences creak like the galley of a wooden pirate ship. Many a night’s sleep is lost to the creeeeeak… pause… creeeeeak… pause… creeeeeaking of the building. Fortunately, we didn’t live far enough up in this galleon to get seasick. But the urban legend about water moving around in the toilets is absolutely true.

Governor Pritzker announced that he’s in talks with a Prime Group to buy and rehabilitate the office building at 100 West Randolph Street. It is one of the most loved and hated buildings in downtown. We haven’t seen such mixed emotion from the public since the Mr. Submarine renovation nearly a decade ago.

In a statement, the state’s head of state stated that selling the former state building will save the state $800,000,000. Which is interesting, because demolitionists have stated that imploding the building and selling the land would raise a similar amount of money.

Because of its age and poor stewardship by the State of Illinois, it’s estimated that renovating the property will cost nearly a third of a billion dollars. In essence, Prime Group is buying a trashed party house, then bringing the fraternity back in as roommates.

It looks like one of those sale-leaseback deals that the casino industry is so into these days. The State of Illinois will sell the building for $70,000,000. Once the building is renovated, the state will spend $148,000,000 to buy 425,000 square feet of office space in the building which it abandoned just months ago because it wasn’t suitable for offices anymore. So, where does the $800,000,000 in savings come from? Pritzker says it’s because the state will consolidate office space from other locations where the state has employees into the building it currently owns, and will once again own a third of after the renovation.

If you remember reducing fractions in fifth grade, the state will spend $78 million to buy office space in a building it couldn’t afford to spend $325 million renovating, ending up with a snack, instead of the whole enchilada.

As for Prime Group, it plans to replace the exterior glass, and separate the offices from the atrium. It might also install a hotel, but that’s not certain yet. The renovation is being designed by JAHN, so even if the numbers get your undies in a bundle, you can feel relieved that the project is in sympathetic hands.

In the meantime, enjoy the skyscraper that Sterling Bay stuffed in your stocking just before the man with the bag comes to town: 28 stories loaded with 350 new homes at 1245 West Fulton Market in West Town.

While you were making a shopping list and trying to remember where the mall is because everything you ordered for little Timmy and Tammy is bobbing around on a cargo ship two time zones west, the Plan Commission decided that this building a good thing, and voted to approve the project. Other approvals are needed, but not considered obstacles at this time.

In a sign of peace on earth, goodwill to men, the building will bring 70 — count ’em, 70 — units of affordable housing to a neighborhood that went from “really quite affordable” to “not affordable at all” in just a few years. It brings joy to the world to see all of the units mandated by city ordinance located in the actual building, instead of being bought off with cash or slagged off to other buildings in other places. (If you haven’t already, see our earlier piece about the state of affordable housing development in Chicago.)

Here’s what this lick of peppermint stick looks like:

• Address: 1245 West Fulton Market
• Developer: Sterling Bay
• Zoning: C3-3 → M2-3 → DX-7 → R-BPD
• Floor area ratio: 9.0 (7.0 base + 2.0 bonus)
• Floors: 28
• Height: 314 feet
• Residences: 350
• Retail space: 9,615 square feet
• Parking
  • Automobile: 95 spaces
  • Bicycle: 199 spaces
• Two blocks from the proposed new Ogden Metra station
• Predictable pool on the parking podium

In recent years, affordable housing has come to Chicago is dribs and drabs. Five units here. Three units there. Nothing compared to the thousands of units that have been lost in the last decade, leading to all of the economic, social, and business problems that always follow this kind of trend. We’ve been to this rodeo before, but forgotten how to ride.

But on Plan’s list for its most recent meeting was not just one, but five projects of a scale that they may actually do some good. And four of them even passed!

Here’s a look at what’s coming:

• 1203 North California in Humboldt Park: 64 units at the corner of California and Division
• 835 West Wilson in Uptown: 73 units for senior citizens
• 4737 North Sheridan in Uptown: A 28-unit S.R.O.
• 9619 South Cottage Grove in Pullman: 70 units for senior citizens

In addition, a 95-unit S.R.O. at 3150 North Racine in Lake View was initially expected to be presented to the Commission, but got delayed at the last minute.

That’s 235 new units of low-income housing coming to Chicago, assuming the rest of City Hall’s cogs continue turning in the right directions. Plus another 95 that might surface again next month.

A lot has been written about garage conversions, basements, casitas, granny flats, Accessory Dwelling Units and such being the solution to the city’s housing woes. But so far, it’s been mostly words words words. Very few permits have been filed to convert very few small spaces into new places to live.

Granny flats and other small conversions are a good start, and part of a larger solution to the housing puzzle. But they aren’t a magic wand that will instantly flood the city with places to live on the salary earned by a barista, or a cleaning lady, or a shoe shine guy, or a doorman, or a courier, or a food delivery guy, or an Uber driver, or any of the thousands of other human beings the skirts-and-suits crowd relies on every single day to make their lives bearable. We say, bring back the S.R.O.’s. Bring back the boarding houses. Bring back the solutions that worked, but got a bad name for no other reason than they were from a generation past. Just put people in homes so the City That Works can go back to working as a city once again.

The development trio has closed on a $304 million construction loan, which will be used to get things moving again. It was last year that local media were talking about financing problems with this project, but as of today that all seems to have been resolved. Construction is scheduled to be completed in three years, so December 2024, which is adjacent to January, 2025. By then I should be out of the habit of writing “19” on my checks.

More importantly, the developers of this project have released new renderings, which is good because the design has changed several times since the last batch. Here they are for you to enjoy:

Sure, Oak Street has been in decline for a while now. A lot of the high-end stores moved over to Walton or Rush Streets. But Oak is still Oak, even without Barneys and the real Kate Spade.

But empty storefronts and mid-range chains don’t bring in foot traffic, especially with the memory of summer looting fresh in people’s minds. So what do you do to tempt potential shoppers to crack open their wallets? Bedazzle them!

Gold Coast Spy B sent in this video of the new Christmas lights on Oak Street. They’re the same tasteful white lights etching the patterns of oak trees into the darkness. But if you wait a bit, you’ll find out that they’re animated.

Spy B calls it “downmarket,” and he might be right. You no longer have to drive to a suburban strip mall or downstate drag race track to walk through a magical moving light show.

But at the same time, what else is Oak Street supposed to do to bring people in? The people who used to drop a grand on a new pair of shoes every month aren’t visiting anymore. Even people with seven-figure salaries are buying online, instead of walking four blocks to support their local shopgirls. So, points for doing something, I guess. It’s better than doing nothing.

A groundbreaking ceremony was held recently for the next two buildings: Common Lincoln Park, and The Seng.

The Seng is a building unlike most in Chicago. Instead of being snapped up by private equity companies, or overseas investors, the 34 condominiums will only be available to people in Chicago who meet certain income guidelines. That means the Chicago Community Land Trust, a quango run by the Chicago Department of Housing will decide who live there. It’s a small, but important, step toward slowing Chicago’s downtown neighborhoods from continuing to evolve into enclaves for the moneyed loafing class.

The building is named for The Seng Company, which used to have a furniture factory in this space. Seng claims to have invented the sofa bed, and three types of recliners. Today, Seng is no longer in Chicago. It’s in Georgia. And it no longer makes furniture. It makes buildings as real estate investment company.

The second new building is called Common Lincoln Park, presumably because it will be run by a New York company called Common, and because it’s kinda sort nearish to the Lincoln Park neighborhood.

Common likes to describe its buildings as “co-living” spaces. Which to salt-of-the-earth middle westerners means it’s coastal millennials re-inventing the boarding house wheel again.

In this case, the boarding house is on an unusually large scale. Big enough that you might even call it a dorm. We’re talking 400 rooms in a ten-story building, almost the exact size as ol’ McIntyre Hall from my university days, but without the R.A.’s and black light foam hallway rave nights. Hopefully.

Mike Drew, founder of Structured Development says, “Big Deahl brings true economic diversity to the neighborhood, offering a dynamic mix of affordable for-sale housing and market-rate rentals.” He’s not wrong. Sure, we make fun of Common for running a giant boarding house and marketing it as innovation. But if boarding houses and dorms help bring some badly needed mixed-income residents into downtown Chicago, we’re all for it.

Chicago now has S.R.O.’s marketed as “micro apartments.” And boarding houses marketed as “co-living” buildings. Next up: women’s hotels re-invented as “gender-specific safe housing.” I can feel the west coast venture capital money already.

The amount varies by project, but in the projects we track, it’s generally in the six to eight-figure range. So, not peanuts.

The city then pools the money from the height the developers bought, and redistributes it to the people responsible for the care and feeding of some of the city’s important, but less profitable, structures.

Recently, the Department of Planning and Development made a list of 12 buildings it thinks deserve a slice of that accumulated money. Here’s what it thinks is deserving:

• Greenstone United Methodist Church: This Pullman church was built in 1882, and designed by Solon Spencer Beman. The D.P.D. recommends it get $1,080,000 for restoration and preservation.
• Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church: This 1889 Grand Boulevard church was designed by none other than Dankmar Adler as a synagogue for the Isaiah Temple. While that would be enough to make most buildings noteworthy, this was also the place where gospel music was invented in 1931, and where Bo Diddley learned to play music. It’s in line for $900,000 in Adopt-a-Landmark money.
• Second Presbyterian Church: Stunning both inside and out, time and the rigors of city living have not been kind of this building. We’ve told you about a number of preservation efforts in recent years. Now it could get $250,000 from the Adopt-a-Landmark program
• Muddy Waters House: A quarter of a million dollars has been recommended for this Kenwood home which became a city landmark just a couple of months ago. If you don’t know who Muddy Waters was, you can turn in your Chicago card right now, and move to the prairie. There’s a reason this is called “The original house of blues.”
• Gunnison Street Lofts: We don’t know much about this Uptown building. But the D.P.D. thinks it deserves $250,000 developer dollars. So we should eventually hear something about why.
• Stone Temple Missionary Baptist Church: Originally the First Roumanian Congregation, this is another of Chicago’s synagogues that later found a second life. The North Lawndale building was erected almost a hundred years ago, when the neighborhood was known as “Chicago’s Jerusalem.” After it became a Baptist church, it played a role in America’s Civil Rights Movement, and hosted Martin Luther King, Junior. A quarter million has been recommended for this one, too.
• K.A.M. Isaiah Israel Temple: This magnificent Kenwood building is the home of Chicago’s second-oldest Jewish congregation, and was designed by Alfred Alschuler. It could get $250,000 in Adopt-a-Landmark funds.
• 6901 South Oglesby Cooperative Apartment Building: This South Shore building was one of the pioneers of the lakefront high-rise co-op movement that shaped Chicago, and made it what it is today, visually. For some reason this one is in line for $249,999 — a dollar less than the previous few.
• Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley House: There’s so much to say about this landmark Woodlawn home. You’re better off reading the city’s document about it than relying on an inadequate summary of its history from us. It’s up for the rather specific sum of $249,541.
• Pentecostal Church of Holiness: You may know this North Lawndale building as Our Lady of Lourdes. It was a Czech church until 1964, and only added English language masses 30 years earlier. It was the home church of Bishop Dempsey, who founded the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. The Archdiocese of Chicago closed the church a while back. It became a Baptist church in 2006, but was vacant again by 2012. It became a Pentecostal church five years ago, and is expected to get $248,000.
• 9401 South Ewing Avenue: We’ve written about the Schlitz tied houses a number of times, and about this specific one once. One of the official reasons this is a city landmark is because of how economically important beer was to Chicago. So if you’re a beer fan, a history fan, or a beer history fan, you probably understand why it’s on tap for $243,260.
• John J. Glessner House: This Prairie Avenue building is the only one on the list with its own museum. Since it has its own museum, and its own web site, you don’t need us to tell you about it. The people at the Glessner House Museum will be happy to do so. For a fee.

Nothing is simple at City Hall, so the D.P.D. recommendations aren’t final. Other people in other committees still have to green light the list. But it’s a nice look at what may be preserved soon in a neighborhood near you.

If the only reason you go to the Lincoln Park Zoo is for the Christmas lights display, now there’s another reason: To check out the historic Lion House.

Even we have to admit the Lion House was pretty depressing. It smelled bad. It was crowded. It was noisy. And you can’t help but feel bad for the beasts behind the wire waiting for that big litter box in the sky. The only reason to go in during ZooLights was to use the bathrooms. Which also smelled bad, were crowded and noisy, and you couldn’t help but feel bad for the people waiting in line for the porcelain litter boxes in the basement.

That’s all in the past, thanks to a $41,000,000 renovation of what is now called the Pepper Family Wildlife Center. Designed by Goettsch Partners, the old lion house has been spruced up, and doubled in size, while preserving the existing building. According to a press release:

The design team worked closely with the Commission on Chicago Landmarks to preserve, restore and enhance the architecturally significant features of the original Arts and Crafts structure, including the masonry, clay tile roof, and copper gutter, along with windows and doors.

That’s for the people. For the critters, it gets even better:

 The savanna-style habitat includes detailed rockwork to introduce climbing features and expand environmental options for the lions while providing embedded heating and cooling elements for climate control. Tree structures and deadfall are made from trees certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, and food ziplines, simulating prey, provide an enrichment opportunity for the lions.

If you think a “food zipline” is great idea for Thanksgiving dinner, remember Aunt Marjorie’s forking incident of 2008. And she’s not any faster these days.

Looking at the lions is done through 1½-inch-thick glass, to keep the kitties safe from the kiddies. And now there’s a “Lion Loop” which allows you to go underground and look up at the big cats.

The cat house is home to lions, snow leopards, lynx, and red pandas. Which aren’t pandas. They’re sorta-kinda related to skunks.

Another good reason to visit the Lincoln Park Zoo is because it’s still freaking free. At a time when taking the family to the Field Museum and lunch downtown requires a second mortgage, the zoo is a bargain, and something of which all Chicagoans should be proud.

It was McHugh Construction that pulled off the $1,600,000 renovation of the 20-story office block in the north shore city’s downtown. Fifteen thousand square feet of space on the lobby and lower levels was upgraded, but somehow still ended up being very very beige. Other work included the HVAC system, the fire system, and security. In addition, the building’s exterior was kitted out with color-changing LED lights.

A combination of reduced foot traffic and the need to draw tenants back to office buildings has led many building owners around the country to renovate their office tower interiors. With a sizable chunk of large companies choosing to remain fully or partially remote, it remains to be seen how effective this strategy is. When the CEO of a billion-dollar healthcare company accidentally reveals that he’s working from home in his slippers, it’s hard to rally the troops to embrace commuting and the other hassles that come with office life.

This isn’t just any building. It’s the home of WGN-TV. The television station moved to this building in 1963 because the old Tribune Tower space was too small. The Trib’s building columns were too close together for a studio of the size required for television.

The Ol’ Number Nine has five years left on its lease, but it seems unlikely that it will be allowed to stay on after that. Hines is a top shelf developer that puts together big projects, and also bought the property across the street for a total of 33 acres of land, so its plans are clearly ambitious. What those plans are remains to be seen. But Hines has a habit of e-mailing us press releases about every little thing it does, so we should know sooner or later.

It’ll be interesting to see what kind of artifacts are uncovered when WGN-TV moves out. There are dusty nooks and crannies in that building that haven’t been touched in decades. With any luck, they’ll find their way down to the Museum of Broadcast History for the rest of us to enjoy.

Expect lots of wailing and gnashing of sentimental teeth, including special shows about the history of Bozo’s Circus at the station. These will likely be hosted by the persistently-genial Dean Richards, who will carefully tiptoe around the inconvenient fact that Bozo was was not a Chicago invention, but a character syndicated out of Los Angeles, and that every big city is America had its own Bozo. There are still plenty of people at channel 9 who insist he was invented there.

Where the television station ends up is anyone’s guess. The Loop seems likely, as that’s where all of the other big commercial broadcasters are, and ‘GN was always at a bit of a reporting disadvantage being half-way out of town. Plus, Loop landlords are eager to bring in long-term occupants like TV stations, which (WBBM-TV notwithstanding) usually don’t move around much. But don’t count on a streetfront studio. That turned out to be a fad, and even WGN Radio’s “showcase studio” seems vacant most of the time.

The Saint Regis Chicago still has that new skyscraper smell, but already someone has decided to make changes to it. In this case, adding a floor.

Floor counting is more of an art than a science. It seems straightforward, but real estate types play all sorts of games for all sorts of reasons. We’ve seen double-height lobbies counted as three floors, even though there’s only one level. We’ve seen long elevator runs through nothingness counted as dozens of floors. We’ve seen floors renumberd because of patriotism (1 World Trade Center), or superstition (skyscrapers in Asia and Las Vegas). We’ve seen skyscrapers where the floor numbers start where a neighboring building left off (Las Vegas again).

Regis (its friends call it “Regis”) has 101 floors above Upper East Wacker Drive. Now it’s getting a new one. An 815-square-foot mezzanine.

Some people count mezzanines as floors. After all, they have floors. You can stand on them. You can spill a drink on a rug on one of them. So they must be floors, right? Not everyone agrees, and at this particular moment we really don’t care. The point is that a mezzanine level is going to be added to Saint Regis so that the restaurant can have a private dining room.

For those of you who still adore your TI-85, that means the size of the skyscraper will go from 1,599,957 square feet to 1,600,772 square feet.

There is a downside to this upsize. It means that another still-unbuilt may get smaller. You see, there’s only so many square feet of building permitted within Lakeshore East, and the development currently only has 1,634,422 square feet to play with. That’s for both Building I and Building O to share. So if the Wanda Vista Tower Saint Regis tower gets bigger, another building must get smaller. It remains to be seen if one or both of those buildings will get a haircut, or if there is another solution to this problem.

The first tower to go up will be on the east side of the property. Expect 38 floors, with retail at the bottom, residences at the top, and offices in a nine-story attached podium.

Plans for the second tower on the west side are a little less firm. It should be an even bigger tower, but whether it’s going to be residential or office, even Carnac the Magnificent doesn’t know just yet. Such is life in the time of ‘rona. Here are the vitals:

• Address: 1300 West Carroll
• Developer: Sterling Bay
• Architecture firm: SOM
• Zoning: M2-3 → DX-7 → Residential-Business Planned Development
• Maximum height:
  • East tower: 418 feet
  • West tower: 515
• Roof height:
  • East tower: 391 feet
  • West tower: TBD
• Floor area ratio:
  • East tower: 8.795
  • West tower: 16.09
• Maximum residences:
  • East tower: 338
  • West tower: 633 maybe
• Office space:
  • East tower: 204,780 square feet
  • West tower: 569,657 square feet maybe
• Automobile parking:
  • East tower: 460 spaces
  • West tower: 255 spaces

210 is a project from Newcastle Limited, designed by Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture, that will reach 380 feet into the sky a half-block north of the CTA Green/Pink line — you guesed it — on North Morgan Street.

The most interesting part of this project is the legal name of the developer. Big development companies like to form little companies to build each of their projects. Usually the names of these firms are boring things like Erie Street Joint Venture, or VL7483494 LLC. This one is Solar Junkyard LLC. “A” for effort.

Now that this project is officially in black-and-white, here are the nitty gritties:

• Address: 210-220 North Morgan Street
• Developer: Solar Junkyard LLC
• For realsies: Newcastle Limited
• Architecture firm: Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture
• Zoning: C1-1 → DX-7 → Residential-Business Planned Development
• Net site area: 17,591 square feet
• Floor area ratio: 11.5 (7.0 base + 4.5 bonus)
• Floors: 30
• Width: 123 feet
• Maximum height: 380 feet
• Roof height: 360 feet
• Length: 125 feet, 10 inches
• Maximum residences: 204
• Minimum automobile parking: 50 spaces
• Loading docks: 2
• Setbacks: 4th, 23rd and 29th floors
• Roof decks: 4th and 29th floor (north facing)
• Green roof: 2,628 square feet
• Retail space: 4,040 square feet

Though the Cenacle Sisters organization has been around for 195 years, the number of nuns has thinned to the point that it’s no longer possible to keep this location running, so the building is going to be demolished and redeveloped. The money from the sale will be used to support the remaining nuns for what remains of their lives.

The building at 513 West Fullerton parkway was built in 1967, and looks every bit of it. But that’s OK, because this was a spiritual retreat. If the building was ugly, that’s fine because visitors were supposed to look inward, not outward.

Mr. Rodkin indicated that the plans haven’t been fully nailed down, but we should expect a multi-unit residential building on part of the property, and some townhouse action on the rest. Being just two blocks away from Lincoln Park, we expect prices to run from pharisees up to golden calf territory.

If you like Three First National Plaza in The Loop, you’ll love this new building designed by Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture for Newcastle Limited. Which is in no way related to Newcastle United.

210 has massing very similar to Three First National: Three tall rectangles stepping down to help a bit with light and air. In this case, the steps face north, while at 3FN, they face east. More importantly, 210 erases that most evil enemy of city life: a surface parking lot.

Commuters who rely on the CTA’s Morgan station will notice an increase in architecture nerd swarming activities, as this building is one block north of that Green/Pink Line station, and the city has already approved a similarly-size skyscraper for one block south at 160 North Morgan. Expect much gawking and clicking of smartphone cameras for the next few years.

Here’s the details as of late October. Don’t start picking our furniture just yet. It’s possible that there have been revisions:

• Developer: Newcastle Limited
• Architecture Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture
• Max height: 380 feet
• Roof height: 342 feet
• Length: 114 feet
• Width: 92 feet, eight inches
• Floors: 33
• Amenity decks
  • Fourth floor
  • 33rd floor, with pool
• Retail space: 4,040 square feet
• Loading docks: 2
• Comes complete with “people space,” an improvement over other buildings which have featured “giant killer robot space.”

Streeterville Spy Brian was out there this week, and noticed he wasn’t alone. In addition to the heavy machinery parking lot that’s sprung up there since we last stopped by, there were people. People in hardhats. People in hardhats doing things.

A few months ago, Mayor Lightfoot made a $5,400,000 promise to finally turn this patch of lakefront property into a public park, a mere 34 years after another mayor made the same promise. Is this a sign that it’s finally happening?

We don’t see any new construction permits for this space, so for right now we’ll file it in our “Believe it when we see it” drawer. If anyone has the skinny on this, it’s probably the good folks at Related Midwest.

You’ll remember the city approved Related’s plan to build a thousand new homes in a two-tower complex replacing the Chicago Spire scar. Part of that approval requires Related to pony up $10,000,000 for the design and construction of DuSable Park.

And no sneaky waiting until the buildings are already up to start writing checks. Related has to put $1,500,000 in escrow for the Park District to use for the design of the park before the City of Chicago will issue a foundation permit. Once the permit is issued, the Chicago Park District has 16 months to come up with a design, get it through both public and city approval, and then deliver the design to Related. Only then can Related build the park. And when it does, it has to finish the park either within two years of being given a construction permit for the park, or before it opens the first of the two buildings. Whichever comes first.

As you can see, there are still a lot of moving parts with this. Some media outlets have stated that DuSable Park will open as soon as 2024. We don’t see that happening. But it’s nice to see that something is happening.

That future got a little brighter a couple of weeks ago, when the City of Chicago issued a revised construction permit:

REVISED SHEAR WALL/CORE WALL LOCATIONS DIMENSIONS AT MAT SLAB, REVISED ELEVATOR PIT DIMENSIONS, ADJUSTED ELECTRICAL DUCT BANK BETWEEN CURRENT IN SITU LOCATION AND CORE RISER LOCATION, ADJUSTED BELOW GRADE PIPING ROUTES FOR STORM AND SAN WITHIN BUILDING FOOTPRINT, NEW PARKING ELEVATOR PITS, MODIFIED COLUMN SPACING AT GARAGE, MODIFIED STORAGE TANK DIMENSIONS, NEW GRADE BEAMS AT GARAGE, MODIFIED DIMENSIONS AT GARAGE MAT SLABS, MODIFIED GAS LINE TO METER PER PEOPLE’S GAS REQUIREMENTS

It’s word salad with walnuts to us, but any signs of life are welcome when it comes to a project as large and high-profile as this one.

Now, a South Loop spy who prefers to remain anonymous tells us that construction workers have begun bricking up the north-facing windows at 1006 South Michigan. That’s the building that will bump uglies with the south side of 1000M, so a good bricking is required before anything interesting can rise next door at number 1000.

We’ve got our ears to the pavement on this one. But if you hear anything before we do, slip a tip or a photo into our line, and you may get a small reward. We’re good like that.