Nearly a century ago, the Chicago Tribune launched an architectural competition to design a new headquarters. The resulting building—an iconic, neo-Gothic gem on Chicago’s famed Michigan Avenue—will welcome residents instead of office workers when the Tribune Tower Residences opens next year.
Owned and co-developed by CIM Group and Golub & Company, the reimagined Tribune Tower will provide buyers with an array of distinctive, luxury condominiums and lavish amenities. However, the redesign honors the heritage and beauty of the historic building.
For example, one of four resident amenity spaces will be located at the 25th floor where the crown of the building begins. This includes exterior space within the distinctive cage of flying buttresses that surrounds the upper stories.
“If you stand in this space and look up eight floors through the flying buttresses all around the building, it’s just the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen,” said Lee Golub, principal, executive vice president of Golub & Company. “If we could bring people to the crown, we’d sell out in one second.”
Originally designed by architects John Mead Howells and Raymond M. Hood and completed in 1925, the reinvigorated Tribune Tower will include 162 residences ranging in price from the $700,000s to $7+ million. Solomon Cordwell Buenz is the architect of record for the project. The exterior and lobby of the building are landmarked, but everything on the inside has been gutted to make way for new, high-end spaces, designed by The Gettys Group.
According to Golub, the redesign “is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to live in a one-of-a-kind building with an amazing historic pedigree. This will never come about again.”
Over the years, a series of additions have gone up on the eastern portion of the property. This mass, which included 60,000-square-foot floor plates, has been literally carved up. From the third story an up, residences will open out to a private courtyard. When this section of the project is complete, there will be a seven-story South Wing and a 12-story North Wing, the top four stories of which will be new construction.
The project also includes a redesign of Pioneer Plaza, with Philadelphia-based OLIN conducting landscape design, to entice pedestrians to visit the new, two-story retail spaces totaling 47,500 square feet. The retail will wrap around the front of the building to take better advantage of Mag Mile foot traffic.
“Tribune Tower has the most frontage of any building along Michigan Avenue,” said Golub. “But no one knew it because the radio station took the space at the corner, Nathan Hale Court was closed and then you had Dylan’s [Candy Bar] at the other end.”
Removed during renovations, the 149 pieces of stone, building fragments and other artifacts collected by Tribune correspondents over the years will return to the exterior of the building where pedestrians can see and touch them. Beneath the plaza, work is underway on a 250-vehicle parking garage.
Amenities will include a luxury spa, state-of-the-art fitness center, indoor pool, driving range simulator, co-working lounge, meeting rooms, entertainment areas and event spaces complete with a bar and prep kitchen. A terrace will offer outdoor grilling stations and a sun deck while the 25th floor Crown Amenity offers intimate seating and dining areas framed by the stunning flying buttresses and provides 360-degree views of the city.
First move-ins are planned for the fourth quarter of 2020. Golub and CIM are still in the pre-approval phase for a new construction tower on land to the east of Tribune Tower, first announced last April.
