July 09, 2014
Is Jeanne Gang the mystery architect behind the plan for this giant tower?
A Chinese real estate firm plans to invest $900 million in an 89-story hotel-and-apartment tower that would be built on the Chicago River east of Michigan Avenue.
Beijing-based Wanda Group said construction of the Wacker Drive skyscraper would begin this year, with the building expected to open in 2018, according to a statement on the firm’s website. The tower would be the third tallest in Chicago, reaching about 1,150 feet into the sky, and include a five-star hotel with 240 rooms.
The development site sits in the Lakeshore East development, west of Coast, an apartment tower that opened last year.
One of the biggest questions about the project is its architect. Magellan Development Group LLC, the Chicago-based developer of Lakeshore East, said in March it hired local architect Jeanne Gang to design a high-rise in Lakeshore East to follow up on Aqua Tower, her critically acclaimed building nearby.
Related: Aqua developer recruits architect Jeanne Gang for another tower
Though Wanda does not identify the architect of the new skyscraper, the rendering on the firm’s website (above) matches a description of Ms. Gang’s design that appeared in a profile of the architect in The New Yorker in May.
“Her design nestles together three buildings, which softly zigzag in and out as they rise,” wrote Amy Waldman, the author of the story. “The middle building will straddle a road.”
It’s possible Ms. Gang designed a building for one of the other sites in the Lakeshore East development. As of March, Magellan, which has been developing the Lakeshore East project since 2002, had nine development sites still available of the original 16.
A spokeswoman for Ms. Gang’s firm, Studio Gang Architects, did not return phone calls. An executive at Magellan did not return phone calls.
“Investing in Chicago property is just Wanda’s first move into the U.S. real estate market,” Wanda Group Chairman Wang Jianlin said in the company statement. “Within a year, Wanda will invest in more five-star hotel projects in major US cities like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. By 2020, Wanda will have Wanda branded five-star hotels in 12-15 major world cities and build an internationally influential Chinese luxury hotel brand.”
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