March 23--Regrettably, like a lot of people, I'm at a loss to come up with a better name for that property with the gaping hole in 400 block of East North Water Street besides calling it the "old Chicago Spire site."
You can't put a price on an identity like that, probably.
Other sites still awaiting development, such as Chicago's old main post office and the empty lot where Michael Reese Hospital's campus once stood, could stand to benefit from new monikers.
In fact, in lieu of progress toward actually repurposing the properties -- currently on pace to happen ... never -- it might even make sense to sell their naming rights to some business and earn back at least the cost of maintenance.
Comcast Gardens, anyone? Taco Bell Building? Wayne Enterprises?
All would be better than reminding people of a virtual mausoleum that's now been more or less dormant for two decades and a hospital razed in service of an impractical, ultimately failed Olympics bid.
An old name and past can be an albatross. Chicago's old main post office might as well be called Chicago's Albatross at this point.
Certainly, if you said, "Go straight from the Eisenhower under Chicago's Albatross" or "I wonder if they'll put a casino in Chicago's Albatross," plenty of people would know what you were talking about.
Of course, the old Chicago Spire, a project correctly branded "financial suicide" in 2006 by a rival developer named Donald Trump, is associated with its own brand of failure. Work on architect Santiago Calatrava's design never quite got off the ground, literally at least.
There is only a gaping hole, and the gaping hole has been back in the news this week.
The current owner of the ugly void west of Lake Shore Drive, where the 150-story tower was to be built until financing came apart in the economic downturn, finally plans to put in a berm to sort of hide the foundational pit left behind.
Lovely as it may be, no mere landscaping can obscure and beautify this mistake by the lake more effectively than continuing to call it the Chicago Spire site, conjuring up the unlikely mental image of a soaring 2,000-foot skyscraper for an eyesore that's 76 feet deep.
Owner Related Midwest is beneficiary of earlier developers' outsized ambitions, at least until its own plans are revealed, setting up a comparison to what came before. Then it might seem better to be compared to the horrific Great Pit of Carkoon, which those unfamiliar with "Return of the Jedi" probably can deduce is not good.
The only way to truly break from the past is to have a real, viable plan for the future. The rest is window dressing, asset management and marketing.
Call it what you like, Chicagoans do know a white elephant from a hole in the ground.
philrosenthal@tribpub.com
