Status Update: A New High For Streeterville’s Loews Hotel Tower
The new Loews Hotel going up at 435 North Park Drive now has a tower crane — a significant step towards its climb to 53 stories and 635 feet.
We took the photo above just before the crane went up, and then received the photos below from one of our Streeterville Spies just yesterday.
When completed, the SCB-designed building will have 398 apartments over 400 hotel rooms. It is one of only two buildings in the last few years where we can remember the neighbors complaining that it isn’t all enough.
I, a streetervillian, agree that this building is too small. First off, the tower uses only a fraction of the site, which I think is a travesty. I think that we need to go back to building towers like they did in the loop, wall-to-wall, with street-canyons. Honestly, we have the river on one edge, michigan ave on one, and the lake on the other, you’re never more than 3 blocks from somewhere with really clear views of the sun, thats quite sufficient. I don’t understand why everything gets built with these horrible podiums. The new apartment tower at 500 N LSD, is a good example of what we should be doing (less podium, more impressive, consistent tower) , except that it doesn’t seem it will have any sort of retail at the bottom, and will instead be a dead block… I mean, Even doing what was done with The embassy suites/River East 21 building. That has a podium, but the podium is tall enough to create the sense of space on the street level, and there’s uses all around in it at the ground level. (Unfortunately, many of those spaces on grand remain unused…)
That’s my 2¢