Free Wood Fair Coming to Chicagoland

I got an e-mail from our friends over at WoodWorks last week letting us know that there's an event coming up that is of interest to architects, engineers, and those in related trades.

The WoodWorks Solutions Fair is a free event that will be held at the misnamed Westin Chicago North Shore, which isn't actually in Chicago at all, but out in the northwest suburb of Wheeling.  It is an all-day event scheduled for Wednesday, September 8th.  More information here.

Here are the nuts and bolts from the press release:

The Wood Solutions Fair is a free, day-long educational event for architects, engineers, builders, professors and students.  It combines topical seminars with relevant trade booths to provide a comprehensive educational experience for building with wood in a full range of non-residential and multi-family building types.

Seminar topics include:

• Design of Wood-frame Structures for Wind and Seismic Forces

• Introduction to Post-frame Construction and Design

• The Future of Structural Insulated Panels as a Commercial Building Envelope

• Connection Solutions for Wood-frame structures

• A Practical Guide to Life Cycle Assessment

• Today’s Glulam – Important Considerations for Design and Construction Professionals

• Understanding Your Environment: Forests, Trees and Responsible Wood Products

• Fire Protection Principles for Wood-frame Structures 

Regional Wood Design Award winners will be announced, and in-depth and practical information can be applied to projects immediately.  WoodWorks is an approved AIA provider, and eligible attendees will qualify for up to 6 HSW credits.  Professional Development Certificates and AIA CES forms will be available on site.  

Video and pix: Block37 LED Displays

Earlier this year we mentioned the new LED displays now adorning the atrium of Block37 (1 West Randolph Street), and posted a few pictures and a video.  Now we've been sent a press release from the company that engineered the displays, along with some much better pictures than we had:

Status Update: Children's Memorial Hospital

Yet another status update on the new Children's Memorial Hospital (225 East Chicago Avenue),  The facade is coming along, and is even completely in place on some sides.  The vertical stripes you see in the picture are repeated at the top of the building where they conceal mechanical equipment.

Face-Off in the Gold Coast

There's a face-off in the Gold Coast.  The facade of what used to be Sur La Table (52 East Walton Street) has been pulled, pushed, knocked, ripped, and torched off over the last couple of weeks.  It looks like the whole place is being gutted.

Last we heard, a cupcake joint was looking at moving in here.  But there are still "For Lease" signs on the scaffolding, so maybe that plan fell through.

Leveling the Field at Ogden School

Construction is well underway on the new Ogden Elementary School (24 West Walton Street) on State Street.

We've talked about the demolition and construction of the new school before (here and here).  The old school is long gone, and foundation work is underway on the new one.  This picture was taken not that long ago when there was still a little snow on the ground.  With Odgen gone, it's easier to appreciate the the old Scottish Rite Cathedral (915 North Dearborn Street) across the street.  That, by the way, is for sale.  Hopefully the new owners will respect its visual integrity.

Status Update: Hotel Palomar Chicago

The signs for the new Hotel Paolmar Chicago (505 North State Street) are up, but you may have missed them amid the construction mayhem that is the CTA's Grand subway station redevelopment.  The lobby is still a work in progress, but the outside looks pretty nice.  The company's web site won't take reservations before April 8, 2010 so it looks like we have an idea when it will open.

Status Update: Children's Memorial Hospital

Yet another update on the new Children's Memorial Hospital (225 East Chicago Avenue) going up in the Gold Coast.  Though there's much glazing work to be done, the main parts of the facade are mostly in place.  For the last few weekends, there have been early-morning shipments of large pieces of truck-sized equipment whose labels, to a layman like myself, appear destined for the emergency room or ICU.

Status Update: The Ritz-Carlton Residences

It's hard to see from ground level, but progress is being made on Michigan Avenue's newest condo tower.  For months, caissons have been driven into the sandy Chicago shoreline soil and there now appears to be something of a basement and retaining wall on the north side of the property.  The Ritz-Carlton Residences (664 North Michigan Avenue) used to be the location of the Terra Museum of Art, a popcorn stand, a Starbucks, and a beloved historic mid-rise block known as the Farwell Building.  The old-fashioned mid-rise will be reincarnated via a controversial facade transplant.

In the interest of full disclosure it should be noted that I am a sometimes contributor to the Ritz-Carlton Residences' blog, for which I receive no paid compensation.

Video and pics: Helicopter Lift at Water Tower Place

Several streets in the Gold Coast were shut down this morning so that new HVAC units could be lifted to the roof of Water Tower Place (845 North Michigan Avenue).

The sky crane picked up the HVAC units one at a time from the ball field at nearby Lake Shore Park, ferried them down Chicago Avenue, and then up to the top of the skyscraper.  Getting them over that lip is quite a feat, as it is 1,059 feet high.

The original lift was scheduled for January 23, 2010 but had to be postponed a week because of bad weather.

Helicopter lifts are much like baseball games -- simultaneously boring and fascinating.  I made a video of a portion of the lift to give you an idea what it looks like. I didn't bother shooting the transport of all six giant silver boxes.

More pictures follow the video.  Click on them to enlarge.

Status Update: The Sullivan Center

Last Wednesday (January 20, 2010) I was standing at a Loop bus stop waiting for any CTA vehicle beginning with a "1" to come by and take me home when a thought struck me.  "Aren't I supposed to be under a scaffold right now?"

I turned around and discovered that the scaffolding surrounding the State Street facade of the Sullivan Center (33 South State Street) was gone.  Years after Carson Pirie Scott abandoned the heart and soul of its home town, the building that made it famous is emerging from its construction cocoon.

If you haven't been by in a while, you should make a trip.  The exterior is magnificent.  Hopefully something good happens to the interior, too.  There have been a few small shops that opened on the Wabash Street side, but the bulk of the retail space remains unclaimed.  A hoped-for grocery store fell through, and the latest out of Crain's Chicago Business is that Target might be interested in opening there -- probably the final nail in the coffin of the flagship Sears store across the way.

Status Update: University of Chicago New Hospital Pavilion Project

A crane towers over Hyde Park as it assembles the University of Chicago's New Hospital Pavilion Project. Hopefully that's a temporary name.  The 10+1-story project designed by Rafael Viñoly Architects & Cannon Design should be done in 2012, and will add 1.2 million square feet of space to the medical campus.

Status Update: New DuSable Museum

Work continues on the expansion of the DuSable Museum in Hyde Park.  The Roundhouse Project, as it is called, is being built in an 1800's horse stable designed by Daniel Burnham.

More Information About the Wacker Drive Reconstruction

We're learning more about the upcoming reconstruction of North and South Wacker Drive between Randolph Street and Harrison Street.

We first mentioned the rebuilding of Wacker Drive back in November, and now that the April, 2010 start date is fast approaching, it's time to take a closer look.  I wasn't in Chicago at the time of the big 2001-2002 rebuilding of East and West Wacker Drives, but people who have been here longer than I say it was an awful time to get around downtown.

Drivers, and especially commuters, should expect much of the same this time around since at the same time North and South Wacker are being reconstructed, CDOT is also renovating Congress Parkway, and IDOT is rehabbing the Congress Parkway Bridge (Eisenhower Expressway/I-290), and repaving the Ike around the Circle Interchange.

But these things must be done.  It's been 55 years since this portion of Wacker was built.  Time and 60,000 vehicles a day haven't been kind to it.

Work begins April 1, and is expected to last until the end of 2012.  For most of the road, construction will be limited to utility work at first.  But April 1, 2010 is also the date of the first big shock of the project -- the closure of the Congress Parkway interchange ramps.

The way Congress Parkway connects to Franklin Street changes dramatically.  Coming into the Loop and taking the right exit for northbound Franklin Street will now loop you under D'Angelo Park and land you on the left side of Franklin, instead of the current surface merge into the right side of the street.  Click the map to see the new configuration in detail.

Getting back onto I-290 will only be possible from Congress Parkway, Wells Street, and southbound Lower Wacker Drive.  You will no longer be able to do half a cloverleaf and use Franklin as a turn-around to get out of the city as quickly as you came.

This also means that the tour buses that like to use the city-designated tour bus holding zone (with their engines illegally idling all day) on Franklin will have to find a new place to belch.

CDOT published a helpful guide a couple of weeks ago, and here are the highlights and a useful map we created:

• Phase One: Starts January 1, 2011 between Randolph Street and not quite Madison Street.  The ramp to Lower Wacker will be removed and replaced with a landscaped median.
• Phase Two: Roughly between Madison Street and Monroe Street.  Construction will take place during 2011.  The existing ramp to Lower Wacker will be replaced by a one-way ramp leading downward.
• Phase Three: Roughly between Monroe Street and Jackson Street.  Construction expected during 2012.  The Lower Wacker ramp in front of the Willis Tower (233 South Wacker Drive) will be removed and replaced with a landscaped median.
• Phase Four: Construction between Jackson Street and Van Buren Street in 2012.
• The Mystery Phase: This will be a redevelopment of Oscar O. D'Angelo Park.  It should be quite nice when done, with lots of new trees and public areas.  But we've labeled it the Mystery Phase because it doesn't appear on the CDOT timeline, but based on other things we've read it could start in April, 2010.  When we find out for sure, we'll let you know.

But all of the work won't be on the surface.  Below ground, Lower North and South Wacker Drives will receive a number of structural improvements, including an increase in the clearance height for trucks by over a foot.

More notably, however, are thick walls and barriers separating lanes of through traffic from local delivery traffic.  It is also possible that some of these barriers are intended to protect the local skyscrapers from subterranean truck bombs, like the nearly four-foot-thick wall planned to run in front of the base of the iconic Willis Tower.

A few other things caught our eyes while inspecting the CDOT documents:  Two references to "Abandoned Garage" beneath 311 South Wacker Drive.  This may not mean there's an actual abandoned garage beneath the skyscraper, but may just be obsolete entrances to the existing garage.

There was also and a note that the park just south of 300 South Wacker Drive will be walled off from the public on the lower level.  Hopefully there will be some way to get to it from above.

Follow-up: Hermes and Little Miss Matched on Oak Street

As a follow-up to an article earlier this week, I went by the Little Miss Matched boutique that's opened in the former Chelsea Passage space at 39 East Oak Street.  I haven't received any answer to my inquiry with Little Miss Matched, but based on what I saw, I'd say this is a temporary pop-up store just for Christmas.  The floors are damaged and scarred and there's white sheets instead of walls in the back of the shop.

Also, One of our regular readers e-mailed some pictures to me today showing the new Hermes logos on the old Barneys New York building (25 East Oak Street).  Inside is still supposed to be a mess, but the fact that there's new window coverings means that progress is being made.

 

Status Update: The Heisen House

One of the few magnificent old mansions remaining on Lake Shore Drive is being renovated.

The Carl Constantine Heisen House (1250 North Lake Shore Drive) looks like it's been gutted and workers are busy putting things back together.  It's really amazing that such a beautiful mansion remains at this location when so many of its contemporaries were knocked down so that skyscrapers could be built in their place.

In fact, the southern turret of the Heisen house is mere inches away from a neighboring tower.

The home was built in 1891 and designed by architect Frank Abbott.

Among those who have lived at the home is Dorothy Dickson, the daughter of a Chicago journalist who married Heisen when she was 20.  He was a ballroom dancer of note and she had a semi-successful silent film career back before the movie industry moved to what would become Hollywood.  They eventually moved to Britain and divorced.  Her Chicago-born daughter became a big deal on the London stage.

It's not very often I get to post pictures of pretty girls in this blog instead of buildings, so here you go:

Dorothy Dickson in 1927

Slice of Life: When Cranes Snuggle

A pair of cranes working on the new Children's Memorial Hospital (225 East Chicago Avenue) take a snuggle break in the middle of the day.  Awwwwww.

Status Update: Children's Memorial Hospital

This is probably the six zillionth status update we've done for the new Children's Memorial Hospital (225 East Chicago Avenue). But I happened to be in a hospital and managed to snap this picture of the back side of the new building.  Looks pretty good so far.  You can see the area on the left setback where the green roof and play area will be, and how the building cantilevers over its right side at the same point.

Construction Sites Vie For Luxury Supremacy

There's an interesting things that the developers of luxury buildings do in Chicago (and likely elsewhere): They try to out-do each other's scaffolding.

Now that the foundation work appears mostly done at the Ritz-Carlton Residences (664 North Michigan Avenue), there is proper scaffolding over the temporary sidewalk that pedestrians use on the west side of Michigan Avenue.

But the Ritz has trumped the other lux developers by including a two-story illuminated rendering of its building on the outside of the walkway.  The effect is best seen at night, though this CrappyCameraPhone™ picture simply doesn't do it justice.

This bests the previous best effort, which was at the Elysian Chicago (11 East Walton Street) where the tasteful black scaffolds featured 24-hour piped in classical music.

I can't wait to see what's next.

(In the interest of full disclosure it should be noted that I have recently begun blogging for the Ritz-Carlton.  However, I stumbled across the subject of this article before that agreement was reached.)

New Children's Hospital is Hanging Out

In what may be the first of many "Look ma! No hands!" moments around the new Children's Memorial Hospital, the building has begun its horizontal expansion over the alley to its east.

We've done a number of status updates on the hospital at 225 East Chicago Avenue (here, here, here, here, here, and here), but with this horizontal movement, the facade being attached and even some glass going up, it's actually starting to something like its rendering.

Status Update: Walton on the Park

Walton on the Park (900 North State Street) is really coming along.  The glazing is climbing up the side and it's not too hard to finally envision what this building will look like when it's done.