Mega building, the new project from the foundations of the “Chicago Spire”

In the Streeterville neighborhood of Chicago, there is a crater almost 23 meters deep, not the result of a meteorite impact but the legacy of a construction site abandoned after the dream of building the tallest skyscraper in the United States collapsed with the 2008 financial crisis. We are in one of America’s largest and wealthiest cities, known for its architecture and deep love for skyscrapers, from traditional ones like the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) to “unusual” ones like the neo-Gothic Tribune Tower. It was in the maze of streets crowded with buildings over 300 meters tall that the star architect Santiago Calatrava had envisioned the Chicago Spire (also known as the Fordham Spire), a 609.6-meter tall tower. The complex was to have 105 floors, and according to the renderings, it would have taken the shape of a spiral piercing the sky, immediately becoming a new icon of Chicago.

The announcement of the imminent construction of the mega building designed by the Spanish architect was made in 2005 by the real estate giant Fordham Company. However, a few months later, the group publicly declared that it had not secured the necessary funds and sold the project to Shelbourne Development Group, which found a reliable financier in Anglo Irish Bank, a financial institution historically active in the Illinois metropolis. At the groundbreaking ceremony on June 25, 2007, no one anticipated that a severe financial crisis would soon hit the United States. Images of Lehman Brothers employees leaving their New York headquarters with boxes in hand after the bankruptcy declaration on September 15, 2008, were broadcast worldwide. The effects of that crisis were felt first and foremost in major American cities, with Chicago being one of them. The Chicago Spire soon became a symbol of this crisis. The Anglo Irish Bank, which had promised to finance most of the project, was severely impacted by the crisis and demanded repayment from the company involved in building the skyscraper. Consequently, in October 2008, a few weeks after the market crash, work on the skyscraper’s foundations stopped, leaving the city with the crater still visible today.

Fifteen years after the work was halted, the crater, which has become an attraction for thousands of curious visitors, is now the starting point of a new project called 400 Lake Shore. As of March 2024, excavators and concrete mixers have reappeared in the old construction area, and dozens of workers have resumed work on the new foundations, which will support the new large-scale project consisting of two towers designed by the renowned architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. The North Tower, for which construction has begun, will reach a height of 261 meters with 72 floors, while the South Tower will be slightly shorter, topping out at 60 floors.

The Chicago Spire crater is considered the point where the city of Chicago was born because it coincides with part of the land once owned by the Haitian Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, the entrepreneur who in 1770 built a residential complex, giving rise to the first urban settlement from which the city would emerge. Pointe du Sable settled near the mouth of the Chicago River, the city’s main river, and lived in that house for over twenty years before selling it and moving elsewhere. Today, where his home once stood, considered the first permanent residence in Chicago, there is a national historic monument, commemorating the adventurous spirit and desire to build of the American people.