Talk:Chicago Spire/Archive 1

Nice building, but bad purpose
It's a nice building, and impressive, but I wish it wasn't just another tall building for the ultra-rich to live 1000 feet off of the ground. Such a large and iconic building representing such a small percentage of the city's population is, to me, objectionable. If the building served some useful purpose as a commercial or office buidling that would employ thousands, I would feel differently, but as it currently only all residential, I hope it's never built.

And for those of you who say that it will be built, don't jump the gun. It's approved, but that means nothing about it being offically built.

As for the area of the tower (questioned below), it's supposed to have 920,000 square feet; the Sears Tower has nearly 5 times the area at 4.5 million square feet.


 * It's your opinion I know, but I don't really understand. All (at least a majority) of the new units these day are being touted as luxury condos. Do you care about Trump being a luxury building? Waterview Tower? The new Mandarin Oriental? How about those one unit per floor buildings?


 * Second, an office tower would make little sense at all. Forget about the fact that the vacany rate is already pretty bad in Chicago and there are plenty of new office towers coming up still. The location is horrible for an office tower - in the middle of a residential area and with no proximity to good public transportation.


 * Not only that, an office tower's floor plans would make a curvying tower very difficult to build. Even if they did manage to get it to work, the cost to do so would scare away any tenant.


 * On the other hand, it is easy to find a bunch of rich suburbanites to pay well over $1000 a sq. ft. for the most prestigious building in the metro area and absorb the costs.


 * Just saying...


 * I imagine that if it were just an empty sculpture like the Washington Monument or the Eiffel Tower or that baseball bat on end in the West Loop, the above poster wouldn't have such a problem with it. But this is going to be privately funded and serve a purpose in addition to its artistic value.  Oh my, I guess that's a bad thing.  --Kalmia 06:50, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Great spire
I plan to watch/edit this page whenever news breaks about this building. I hope it gets built, I love Chicago's skyline. -ctrlz

Better than google
Wow, you guys are fantastic! If you search Google for "Fordham Spire", you get zero results, but the WP already is up-to-date, a feat that I haven't seen before. Great work! :-)

Taller, but as big as the Sears Tower?

 * It looks kind of skinny there, anyone know how much space this thing is supposed to have?


 * it is approvad.


 * This structure is embarrasing. The spiral was made already and this won't even be anywhere near the two epics going up in Dubai, even with it's little stick on top.
 * It is planned to have a little under a million square feet. It will have quite a bit less floor space than the Sears, Trump or several other Chicago buildings.  Also, 2000 feet is the maximum height allowed by US law.  Congress would have to give aproval to build something to top the tower in Dubai. Kalmia 18:12, 15 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Chicago NIMBYs wouldn't allow anything near the height of Burj Dubai (which will have a huge spire too) anyway. And you can go over 2000ft, just need FAA approval and such (I doubt Congress would get involved).


 * A couple comments. First, this building is not competing against the Burj Dubai for anything. Personally, I think the Burj is a pretty mediocre tower that just so happens to be the worlds tallest. Secondly, the spire has been eliminated from the design. It is now entirely condos all the way up to 2000'. They will be the highest residences in the world when completed. Additionally, FAA approval is needed for anything over 500', not 2000'. Therefore, virtually any skyscraper has to go through the approval process with them. Floor heights have been granted for buildings over 2000' in the past, they've just never been built. As long as its not in a flight path, its not really an issue. And Congress has absolutely nothing to do with the process. One more thing, the reason this tower was embraced by the Streeterville residents in the first place was because they were getting one slim tower, instead of two large ones that would probably get crammed on the site otherwise. Something is going to be built there one way or another. Personally, I'd rather have this. 17 December 2006 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.164.5.126 (talk) 21:03, 17 December 2006 (UTC).

Proof
Here is proof of the approval on the Fordham Spire including pictures.

http://www.chicagoarchitecture.info/ShowBuilding/357.php

Exact location?
Does anyone know precisely where this building is going to go? I visited the site today thinking to take a photo for this article, and the spot next to the Chicago River has signs up for a different condo project. This image and this one (both from the sme website) appear to contradict each other on the location of the tower. JeremyA 20:24, 15 April 2006 (UTC)


 * It is going to be on the southern section —Preceding unsigned comment added by User: (talk • contribs)
 * I recently took some pictures of the lot down there. Is there a sales center?  A sign anywhere?  I didn't see one down there.  Kalmia 06:12, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I was there a couple of days after you, and I saw no sign of anything to do with the Fordham Spire. In fact, as I said above, there were signs advertising condos in an entirely different building that implied that it was going up on that site. JeremyA 14:29, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
 * It's on the southern section closer to the river. Not every proposal puts a sign on the site, especially considering that Fordham is still just a proposal. Maybe you saw signs for new condos in River East? The sales center is actually right now in the Fordham offices and they'll create a new one later. When they do make a new sales center I doubt it will be near the Spire's site since it is basically a dead end with little visibility.

Stories
The article says 124 stories but the official website says 115. I guess it depends if you count the 20 story hotel or not. But still 115+20 does not equal 124. Jason Quinn 16:52, 27 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, it'll be 124 floors like every recent article states. The website is out of date.


 * Please stop reverting back to 115 floors. Check Emporis and every other recent article. The "official" website is wrong and has been for MANY months now. Fordham Co. has nothing to do with this project anymore as far as anyone knows (that's why the name has changed). Check official city records and zoning revisions - they all say 124 floors. If you plan on using incorrect info like 115 stories then you might as well change the heights back to what they were 1 year ago when the project was first announced. --spyguy 01:54, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Official name
I added a template, and it had a place for the "official name". I just put in "Fordham Spire" because I didn't see any alternatives. If anyone knows if the official name is different, then change it to that. If the official name is Fordham Spire, and you're sure of it, then please remove my HTML comment in the template.-PlasmaDragon 18:43, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Antenna height?
I'm just wondering i beleive the height of the world's talest building's do not count antennas and only the roof height which is why sears tower is not counted ahead of Taipei 101. Therefore judging from the listed roof height it would not surpass the Freedom tower in New York or the CN tower in Toronto as the article states it will. .-Duhon June 21 2006


 * It's a spire, not antenna, therefore it counts. The same is the case with Freedom Tower, and even if you only count roof height for both, Fordham is still taller.--spyguy 16:10, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I think Building height should be the height of the top floor. Everything above that is fluff.


 * Well counting to the spire is the official measure, so that's what matters.--spyguy 04:31, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Window cleaning
How are they going to clean the windows?


 * With.. window washers? --Golbez 06:38, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Utterly without artistic merit
Hideous!!! It looks like a giant suppository/dildo!!! What was Richie smoking when the City board approved this grotesque monstrosity??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.88.108.159 (talk • contribs)


 * It's a lovely curving form like many of Calatrava's designs. --Kalmia 07:04, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Removal of antenna
From what I have heard, the new design will feature the removal of the spire/ antenna and the residential floors will actually go up to the top instead. It will remain at the same height as first proposed. I believe this was actually stated in a news article, which one I dont have a clue. Sorry. - Erebus555 19:54, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

09 December 2006 Article Restructuring
Well it seems like this tower is going forward, and right now it looks as if nothing is going to stop it! (Which makes me happy :) )

Anyway, I have restructured the article to make things more clear and organized. I've renamed 'status' to 'development status' and included only current information in that section. I reorganized and 'archived,' if you will, all the old developoment information and put it in a new section called 'development history.'

I also added a section called 'height,' as this seems to be a prominent topic when discussing this project. This way we can put all height and height competition stuff in one place.

Today, hopefully, I will be adding in-text citations & a reference list based upon those. Everyone has been adding external links, which is much better than nothing, but I wanted to get that stuff more organized. Thanks for keeping those links in there! It makes my job of referencing a lot easier.

I hope everyone likes this setup. I designed it thinking of the future of the article. As new information comes in, we can reform and relocate the then current press releases into the 'development history' section and replace the 'development status' with the newer press releases.

One final thing - according to multiple sources and the press release, the story count will actually be 160 stories. I think the trib listed it as 150 - not sure why. Based upon the fact that more articles reference 160 and the release lists 160, we'll use that. I'll be sure to use multiple inline cites to support 160.

Again, I'll be adding in references very soon. Let me know your thoughts. Chupper 17:20, 9 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I am in full support of what you have done and I can totally understand your reasons for doing so. In response to the information on floor count, the floor count has been increased because of a small redesign. The antenna has been removed from the design and the floors will rise to the same height as what the antenna would rise to. That means the renders on here are old and do not depict the building which is beginning construction. You will need to find the source for this as I got this information off a highrise construction forum. - Erebus555 17:37, 9 December 2006 (UTC)


 * OK. Two things
 * I've added references. These should be sufficient.  If you want something else cited, put a citation request out and I'll see what I can find. (Or better yet, reference it yourself)
 * I've requested from Shelbourne Development that they let us use one of their copyrighted renderings here on Wikipedia. You are allowed to use them on Wikipedia if you can't find any noncopyrighted decent renderings and you have the company's permission.  If I get permission and a higher res photo, I'll upload it right away. Chupper 05:47, 12 December 2006 (UTC)