The Chicago City Council has officially approved the mixed-use tower at 215 North Racine Avenue in Fulton Market. The approval comes on the heels of 715 Randolph nearby landing an anchor tenant, continuing to build the area’s skyline. Efforts for the project are being led by local developer Domus along with architecture firm Archeo Design Studio.
Tower (red) – Park (green) via Google Maps
Rendering of 215 N Racine Avenue by Archeo Design Studio
After some turbulent months due to community pushback on its now-approved zoning designation, the 29-story tower is clear to move forward, replacing a mid-block site between West Fulton Street and West Lake Street. The project also includes a small 11,000-square-foot public park nearby at 1240 West Carroll Avenue.
Floor plans of 215 N Racine Avenue by Archeo Design Studio
The 364-foot-tall structure will feature a small lobby and 1,100 square feet of commercial space along the streetfront, with a ramp up to the parking levels from the side alley. The next three floors will hold 88 parking spaces hidden behind a bronze mesh screen. The floors above will contain 347 residential units, of which 70 will be considered affordable.
Rendering of 215 N Racine Avenue by Archeo Design Studio
Rendering of 215 N Racine Avenue by Archeo Design Studio
The unit makeup will consist of 143 studios, 79 one-bedroom, 120 two-bedroom, and five three-bedroom layouts. Residents will have access to a rooftop amenity floor with an outdoor pool deck. The team is now working on defining the use and maintenance of the park, as well as securing funding. No updated timeline has been revealed.
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Metal Mesh Screens are cheap and look even worse .
Holy parking podium Batman.
The ratio of beds to parking spaces is 0.23! That’s very low. At some point we have to acknowledge that when you increase the size of a building, everything about said building becomes big.
(pretend I said the ratio of parking spaces to beds is 0.23)
Crap work that has the sole purpose of extracting capital gets all the headlines, while good work in the city gets ignored.
Love it.
I dislike that, in order to push this development through, the developer had to bribe the city with an equal amount of land reserved for park space.
These micro-parks aren’t really designed to do any of the things a park is supposed to do, they just waste space. I also wish, fundamentally, that every new development by the city wasn’t seen as a potential bribe operation. A tower like this should be allowed by right in Fulton Market.
If the city wants a park, they should buy the land themselves and buy enough of it so that you can walk more than 100 feet without hitting the park boundry
The park thing is such a mixed bag of takes.
I can see the incentive for the private sector to provide green space is a burden taken off the city in a world of budgets they can never balance. This basically enables a city that’s functionally unable to build new parks to do so without added expenditures.
But the way they are doing so is not adding park spaces in a cohesive manner, which would be far more beneficial as a single, comprehensive plan. This ball-and-chain method impedes future housing development, stagnates affordable housing development, and reduces the number of taxpayers who would contribute much more to the city’s treasury than the one-time expense of a park. The cost of maintenance is a factor, but the long-term investment in park space and health probably outweighs it.
I like Chicago’s green roof/wall requirements. We have the most in the world in one city, and every inch helps with stormwater management. That element is a part of the structure, not whisked away to a different site.
In the end, we are left with a city that will probably not add anything cool without private investment taking the lead, or by extorting the private sector, which will ultimately deliver a half-a**ed product. Sigh…