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Water Tower Place
Water Tower Place is an urban mixed-use development comprising a 758,000 sq ft (70,400 m2) shopping mall in a 74-story skyscraper in Chicago, Illinois. The mall is located on North Michigan Avenue, along the Magnificent Mile. It is named after the nearby historic Chicago Water Tower, which survived the Great Chicago Fire.
In 2022, Brookfield Property Partners turned the building over to their lender, MetLife Investment Management, due to numerous retail vacancies following the closing of Macy's, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and increasing crime along the Michigan Avenue.
When the mall opened, its anchor stores were Marshall Field's and Lord & Taylor. Marshall Field's was converted to Macy's in 2006. Lord & Taylor closed in 2007. Macy's closed in 2021.
In October 2023, it was reported that the top five floors of the shopping mall were for sale, for conversion to office space. MetLife plans to downsize the mall to only the first three floors of the podium structure. Remaining stores include Akira, American Girl, Bath and Body Works, Chico's, Eileen Fisher, Express, Finish Line, Inc., Forever 21, Hollister Co., J. Jill, Lacoste, Lego, Sunglass Hut and White House Black Market.
Originally planned in the late 1960s by the Mafco Company (the former shopping center development division of Marshall Field & Co.), the skyscraper was eventually built in 1975 by Urban Retail Properties, a company led by Philip Morris Klutznick and his son Thomas J. Klutznick. The project received a J.C. Nichols Prize from the Urban Land Institute in 1986. Modernist architect Edward D. Dart, of Loebl Schlossman Bennett and Dart, was the chief architect.
The tower section is a 78-story, 859-foot (262 m) reinforced concrete slab, faced with gray marble, and is the twelfth tallest building in Chicago and the twenty-sixth tallest in the United States. When built, it was the tallest reinforced concrete building in the world. It contains a Ritz-Carlton hotel, condominiums and office space, and sits atop a block-long base containing an atrium-style retail mall that fronts on the Magnificent Mile.
Water Tower Place's opening changed the economic dynamics of the Magnificent Mile by bringing middle-class shops to what had been a street dominated by luxury retailers, tony hotels, and expensive apartments. It shifted downtown Chicago's retail center of gravity north from State Street to North Michigan Avenue.
Richard A. Meyers Realty, Inc. and Urban Investment and Development took an entire floor in the Blair Building, 645 N. Michigan Avenue, and built several full-scale condominium units, several blocks away from the site. This combined marketing approach produced sales of over 100 units before the building was ready for occupancy, a pace that surpassed units ready for occupancy in competing buildings during the same period.[citation needed]
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Water Tower Place
Water Tower Place is an urban mixed-use development comprising a 758,000 sq ft (70,400 m2) shopping mall in a 74-story skyscraper in Chicago, Illinois. The mall is located on North Michigan Avenue, along the Magnificent Mile. It is named after the nearby historic Chicago Water Tower, which survived the Great Chicago Fire.
In 2022, Brookfield Property Partners turned the building over to their lender, MetLife Investment Management, due to numerous retail vacancies following the closing of Macy's, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and increasing crime along the Michigan Avenue.
When the mall opened, its anchor stores were Marshall Field's and Lord & Taylor. Marshall Field's was converted to Macy's in 2006. Lord & Taylor closed in 2007. Macy's closed in 2021.
In October 2023, it was reported that the top five floors of the shopping mall were for sale, for conversion to office space. MetLife plans to downsize the mall to only the first three floors of the podium structure. Remaining stores include Akira, American Girl, Bath and Body Works, Chico's, Eileen Fisher, Express, Finish Line, Inc., Forever 21, Hollister Co., J. Jill, Lacoste, Lego, Sunglass Hut and White House Black Market.
Originally planned in the late 1960s by the Mafco Company (the former shopping center development division of Marshall Field & Co.), the skyscraper was eventually built in 1975 by Urban Retail Properties, a company led by Philip Morris Klutznick and his son Thomas J. Klutznick. The project received a J.C. Nichols Prize from the Urban Land Institute in 1986. Modernist architect Edward D. Dart, of Loebl Schlossman Bennett and Dart, was the chief architect.
The tower section is a 78-story, 859-foot (262 m) reinforced concrete slab, faced with gray marble, and is the twelfth tallest building in Chicago and the twenty-sixth tallest in the United States. When built, it was the tallest reinforced concrete building in the world. It contains a Ritz-Carlton hotel, condominiums and office space, and sits atop a block-long base containing an atrium-style retail mall that fronts on the Magnificent Mile.
Water Tower Place's opening changed the economic dynamics of the Magnificent Mile by bringing middle-class shops to what had been a street dominated by luxury retailers, tony hotels, and expensive apartments. It shifted downtown Chicago's retail center of gravity north from State Street to North Michigan Avenue.
Richard A. Meyers Realty, Inc. and Urban Investment and Development took an entire floor in the Blair Building, 645 N. Michigan Avenue, and built several full-scale condominium units, several blocks away from the site. This combined marketing approach produced sales of over 100 units before the building was ready for occupancy, a pace that surpassed units ready for occupancy in competing buildings during the same period.[citation needed]
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