Delivering life to Chicago’s old Post Office

My Wisch List newspaper column from the Saturday, April 20, editions of The Daily Journal (Kankakee, Ill.) and The Times (Ottawa, Ill.) …

The WISCH LIST

By Dave Wischnowsky

It’s served as a filming location for two Batman movies and one Transformers flick, and it’s sometimes been called “The Incredible Hulk.”

Now, just like Bruce Banner, the super-sized old Chicago Main Post Office could be getting a serious influx of green – as in dollars, not skin.

Standing at 433 W. Van Buren St. on the southwestern fringe of the Loop, the old Chicago Main Post Office is a nine-story-tall monolith that looms alongside the Chicago River and over the city’s Amtrak and Metra tracks. For travelers zipping – or crawling – along on the Eisenhower Expressway it’s a familiar landmark, as I-290 cuts through a massive opening in the base of the structure and morphs into Congress Parkway.

With its floors covering two full city blocks – more than 60 acres – the post office, built in 1921, is a monument to the era when Sears and Montgomery Ward made Chicago the mail-order capital of America.

But over the years, the post office became antiquated. In 1966, for example, a logjam of 10 million pieces of mail actually clogged the building’s system for almost an entire week. And since 1996, when postal operations were moved into a new facility, the post office has actually sat fallow, save for the filming of blockbusters Batman Begins in 2004, The Dark Knight Rises in 2007 and Transformers: Dark of the Moon in 2010.

In October 2009, however, a wealthy British investor named Bill Davies purchased the post office with the plans to transform the massive building into a sprawling retail, residential, commercial and entertainment complex. His aggressive proposal included an initial phase that would create a parking garage and add a 40-story hotel on the building’s east side.

A second phase would construct another 60-story hotel on the west side, as well as a 2,000-foot-tall office, hotel and residential tower that would be the tallest in North America, looking down on even its neighbor Willis Tower, located a few blocks to the northeast. Finally, a third phase would erect two more residential towers along the river as well as a 12,000-space parking garage.

The plan was estimated to cost about $3.5 billion, but so far none of it has happened.
However, last week, according to business news site chicagogrid.com, Davies has now unveiled a new plan that’s downsized from his original plan – but not by much.
The new design still calls for 5.2 million square feet of construction – more than what’s inside Willis Tower – including a 2,900 rental housing unit, 800,000 square feet for stores, 525,000 square feet of office space, 320 hotel rooms and 5,700 parking spaces, for a cost of $1.2 billion.

And that’s the just first phase, which would include a 1,000-foot-tall building. A later phase still envisions a tower that would top Willis in height.

Davies’ new vision also proposes adding floors to the post office and announced that the location would suit a casino if the state legislature eventually grants Chicago a license. I’m not a fan of a casino, which I think often add more blight than boon (see: Detroit). But I do think the proposed complex could breathe life into what’s currently a sleepy part of Chicago.

Architect Joseph Antunovich believes the property is well situated to become a shopping hub, saying, “The whole area is growing. It’s a great area. It is expanding all the way over to UIC [University of Illinois at Chicago] and the medical center,” he said.

Antunovich added: “We believe we could become a neighborhood shopping destination for the people two, three, four miles all the way around us.”

Or, perhaps, for those from even further away. Such as you.