Signs on the door for Chipotle had the official opening date as 12/31/2019 and Jet's has been open for awhile.
Good stuff for this stretch of the Sloop!
LIPS (2229 S. Michigan), The Ultimate in Drag Dining, is proud to announce that ABC 7's COUNTDOWN CHICAGO - A Chicago New Year's Eve tradition for the past 28 years - WILL BROADCAST LIVE - from LIPS Motor Row! COUNTDOWN CHICAGO is the city's longest running local New Year's Eve TV special and will broadcast LIVE from the opulent LIPS Show Palace - Tuesday, December 31st starting at 11:08 PM!
Chef Tom Schmitt's NYE starters include a choice of Lobster Bisque, Wild Boar Pappardelle or Waldorf Salad, followed by a choice of Grilled Filet Mignon & Lobster Tails, Grouper with buerre blanc, or Chicken Picatta. Finish your meal with Chef Tom's New Years Dessert Spectacular!
- Early Seating @ 7pm - $45 - DInner and Fabulous Drag Show (no filiming)
- Late Seating from 9pm - Dinner, New Years Drag Show, ABC 7 Broadcasting LIVE, Champagne Toast, Balloon Drop and LED blinky Party Supplies to ring in the New Year, plus Midnight Drag Queen Drop - $85
For reservations and more information call 312-815-2662.Happy New Year!
With an assist from former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, a proposal for a $20 billion mixed-use complex and transit center west of Soldier Field has regained some momentum after dropping out of the headlines for many months.
Developer Bob Dunn’s proposed One Central project scored one crucial victory last week when a provision giving it extra time to apply for a federal loan was tucked into a must-pass bill funding operations of the federal government. The window on applying had been scheduled to close on Dec. 31, but now has been extended until Sept. 30.
Both Dowell and Lightfoot, who had castigated the company’s Springfield activity, have had some contact with Landmark since its general plans first were disclosed in May. But both still are waiting for more.
“Every once in awhile, they’ll come by and try to show me information,” Dowell said, but “they haven’t come to a community meeting for months.”
Lightfoot aides note that developers of other megaprojects, such as Lincoln Yards, took years to finalize their plans and included high-level contact with CTA and Metra from the beginning. They also say Landmark has yet to make a convincing case that a huge multi-modal transit center is needed near Soldier Field.
10. Millennium ModernMillennium Park opened in July 2004, over budget and behind schedule, but for Chicagoans, who previously knew the Loop east of Michigan Avenue as a gravel parking lot bisected by railroad tracks, and for visitors from all over the country, the massive civic effort was a shot in the arm for 21st-century Chicago. The park features abstract sculptures (Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate, Jaume Plensa’s Crown Fountain), and Frank Gehry’s outdoor bandshell, which is rendered in cool metal, framed in dramatically feathered bangs, and, set off by a trellis extending the length of the lawn. As the reputation of the park solidified, it had a halo effect, developing a new type of architecture, known as Millennium Modern. The area has become a magnet for international names and has also made international names of Chicago architects like Jeanne Gang. Chicago’s built environment is a test kitchen for supertalls, undulating towers, but also for controversial mega developments like Lincoln Yards and The 78, which are heavily influenced by Millennium Modern. The most creative of these early-aughts structures are our current and future landmarks.
HOW TO IDENTIFY: Millennium Modern architecture developed from a wide range of influences, embracing creativity in terms of building forms and pulling broadly from the natural world, like the waves of Aqua and the curls of the Pritzker Pavilion. Look for curving, metal towers of soaring, serrated glass and heights high enough that they seem to be actually touching the future.
NOTABLE EXAMPLES: NEMA Chicago (Rafael Viñoly), Aqua (Studio Gang), Vista Tower (Studio Gang), Jay Pritzker Pavilion (Frank Gehry), One Bennett Park (Robert A.M. Stern)
A South Loop Hoots is also in the works at 1238 S. Canal Street, LeBas said, and he’s gunning for a March opening. He isn’t ready to announce any other forthcoming locations, but is planning to open a Hoots in St. Petersburg, Florida, around late February. Founded in Clearwater, Florida in 1983, Hooters is now owned by two private equity firms, Nord Bay Capital and TriArtisan Capital Advisors, which together operate more than 430 restaurants and franchises around the world.If you're scratching your head about Hoots here is how the article starts:
Hoots, the fast-casual sister chain to “delightfully tacky” breastaurant chain Hooters, has opened its first Chicago location on the outskirts of one of Chicago’s best restaurant neighborhoods, Logan Square. Called Hoots at the Field, it features some of the global company’s most popular menu items, namely chicken wings and snow crab legs — without minute orange shorts and shiny pantyhose. The new counter-service spot comes two years after the chain launched its first Illinois location in suburban Cicero.
The aquarium is one of Chicago’s most popular tourist attractions, but few of the nearly 2 million annual visitors realize that it is more than a menagerie and spends more than $3 million annually on its field research team. The Shedd’s applied-science efforts have been refocused in recent years under CEO Bridget Coughlin, herself a Ph.D. in applied biochemistry, to have one group studying local freshwater aquatic life and the second working in the Bahamas, an independent country spanning some 600 miles to the east of southern Florida.
Their tight lens on Bahamian marine life takes advantage of the Miami-based Coral Reef II, commissioned by Shedd in 1984 for the collection of marine life to display back in Chicago but long since repurposed for science, a conversion mirroring the change zoos and aquariums have made toward conservation. This group of salt-water researchers was already studying creatures along the food chain from conchs to iguanas to groupers to sharks. Adding coral at the low end made sense, Coughlin says, because of coral’s huge significance in the marine environment and to the Bahamas and as a climate-change bellwether.
“It’s a great marrying of something the public understands — coral bleaching, temperatures of the ocean rising — and a great scientific endeavor,” Coughlin says. “What we do on site (is) to engage people with animals and then extrapolate it to out in the wild and how Shedd can contribute to the solution.”
US Soccer is also looking to move out of its Soccer House headquarters in Chicago’s South Loop because it needs more room due to an expanded workforce. It will look to lease space elsewhere in the city for a few years while it figures out a long-term plan.
The house was built in 1890–92 for William Wallace Kimball, a piano manufacturer. Kimball reportedly spent $1,000,000 on the home. At the time, Prairie Avenue was known for its expensive homes designed in popular revival styles, and the district was home to many of Chicago's wealthiest residents. The Kimball House and the John J. Glessner House are the main two surviving examples of the district's homes of the late 1800s. The house now serves as the headquarters of the U.S. Soccer Federation.
It’s no coincidence that the nearly complete NEMA Chicago skyscraper, which at 896 feet is Chicago’s tallest rental high-rise, bears a strong resemblance to Willis Tower. The architect, New York’s Rafael Viñoly, is a fan of our muscular skyline giant.
The comparison is impossible to miss. Even the most casual observer can glimpse it in NEMA’s resolutely right-angled geometry and the way its cluster of nine vertical sections gradually peels away, leaving one to soar to the summit.
Fortunately, the outcome is a vigorous reinterpretation of Willis, not a slavish copy. And that should come as a relief for anyone who cares about Chicago's skyline.
Apartment buildings are notorious for low budgets and lower aesthetic aspirations. A visual flop at NEMA’s prominent site — on the south edge of Grant Park and near the busy corner of Roosevelt Road and Michigan Avenue — would have left a lasting, unavoidable eyesore.
Viñoly, whose previous works include a business school and hospital at the University of Chicago, avoided that trap by doing things the old-fashioned Chicago way: with a directness that verges on bluntness.
For now, we can be glad that NEMA has returned Chicago to its pragmatic architectural roots and endowed the skyline with a fresh shot of visual poetry. That’s better than an ugly concrete stalk along Grant Park.Ok, so maybe not a resounding win - but sounds like it could have been worse.
Marquisha Washington is a Wife, Mother, and the founder and President of Sultry Steps, Inc. Sultry Steps began as a passion project from home and evolved into a boutique located in the Chicagoland Suburb of South Holland since 2016.
At an early age, when many were struggling to fit-in the room, Marquisha was preparing to slay the room! Her sense of colors, combinations, self expression and fashion, fueled her consumption of Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire and Ebony magazines. More important, as a modern working woman, she “seamlessly” reconciles the necessity for runway level fashion with the 21st century woman’s need for comfort. Thus, the “Sensual, Sexy and Functional” offerings of Sultry Steps e-commerce was launched in 2015.
The mystery of just what is coming to the space just north of Burnham Pointe has been answered. I was never able to figure it out from the original construction permit for the exterior work, but a new building permit for the interior build-out just went up that reveals the space is going to be a Paisans Pizza, a suburb brand that's expanding into the city.
It's a good question. With the Old Post Office filling in and the accompanying residential developments around the river, it seems like these restaurants are betting that demand continues to pick up. Will it be enough to sustain so much pizza pie is a fair question and something to keep our eye on.
It’s kind of wild that 2 pizza restaurants are mid-construction within a stones’s throw from each other (Roots Pizza around the corner), both outside-chicago restaurants that are expanding into the city for the first time. Are there enough pizza eaters in printers row to sustain the business? Maybe.
Sloop-bound CTA Holiday Train, 12/3/2019. Taken at Adams and Wabash crossover bridge.
There's a lot of action at the 1000M site right now. Or at least, a lot more action than we've seen there in the last four years.
Looks like real construction equipment is now on site after their ceremonial groundbreaking last month. This building might actually happen.
The Fire also announced plans for a new mural by Chicago-based artist Max Sansing to be completed next week on the north side of the Roosevelt Collection Shops in the South Loop, overlooking the British International School’s soccer fields off South Wells Street.This makes sense as we saw on the Facebook group Hello South Loop! that the mural is underway:
PepsiCo plans to move its 1,300 Chicago workers from an entire 17-story building to a single floor in the redeveloped Old Post Office, becoming the latest company to spread out in an ultrawide building.
The Purchase, New York-based food and beverage giant has leased 192,000 square feet on the third floor of the 2.8 million-square foot former post office, where it plans to move in winter 2020, the company said.
PepsiCo’s Chicago office is the headquarters for its Gatorade, Quaker and Tropicana brands, as well as PepsiCo Beverages’ North America Central Division. It is the company’s second-largest office by employee count, trailing only the Frito-Lay headquarters in Plano, Texas.The fact that this building has gained so much traction is likely a great thing for the Sloop. More people, looking for more food/shopping options, looking for places to live seems like a good flywheel.
DPI is working out of temporary space in downtown Chicago, holding classes, funding faculty research projects and ramping up its staff.
But the UI plans to build a new 500,000-square-foot facility in a $7 billion development known as “The 78” near the South Loop, using half of the $500 million promised by the state for DPI and the statewide Illinois Innovation Network.
The plan is to have DPI at “full strength” in its new building by 2023, UI President Tim Killeen said.
The city of Chicago recently approved incentives for The 78 development, which include housing, commercial space, a new train stop and reconfigured roads and Metra tracks.
“The road is going in, the bulldozers are there,” Killeen said.
EST. 2016
Set out to build a better apparel brand. Growing from the thought: People deserve access to a great product, made the right way, and sold at a great price.
Everything is cut, sewn, and crafted at our factory in Chicago - using U.S. materials.Given their name, it seems like it was destiny that they sought out this location. As a reminder, this was the space where the Chicago Bicycle Company abruptly closed their doors in August.
The idea spun out of a project Idonije and former Bears teammate Julius Peppers have been developing on Motor Row, where a venture of theirs paid $10 million last year for the former Hudson Motor Building at 2222 S. Michigan Ave. They plan to turn that five-story building into FBRK, a co-working and member club space designed to foster collaboration in specific industry sectors including tech, nonprofits, sports and art. They've since added plans for a 109-room boutique hotel to that project, which Idonije aims to open in 2021.Besides the updated open date, what's interesting is that this is the first time we've heard about the plans for the boutique hotel. Not sure what that is, but intriguing.
One of Chicago’s most hotly anticipated restaurants of the season opens today, and its owners hope to break the mold of what beer-focused dining entails. Brewmaster Jared Rouben and business partner/cousin Jeremy Cohn of Moody Tongue Brewing Company launch the Bar at Moody Tongue and the Dining Room at Moody Tongue today in the company’s brand new brewery near McCormick Place. As the names indicate, it’s a two-fold venue with separate fine dining and casual drinking spaces, both helmed by executive chef Jared Wentworth (Longman & Eagle, Dusek’s, Mordecai).
Wentworth’s menu for the 28-seat Dining Room might startle those accustomed to standard brewpub fare — no jalapeno poppers or Buffalo wings here. Instead, he crafts a 12-course seasonal tasting menu with dishes including Maine lobster with matsutake chawanmushi, a delicate, savory Japanese egg custard, squash and wort consomme, and a course of scallop and foie gras with Tokyo turnip, leek, guanciale, and melon and barley wine. The chef does tip his hat to classic bar food with a house-made caraway pretzel with beer cheese. A full menu is available below.
Enter NEMA’s ground floor and you’ll find a minimalist, mostly gray lobby plus two separate entrances and elevator banks for its two tiers of residents. Similar to Streeterville’s ultra-luxurious One Bennett Park, which provides dedicated entrances for its renters and condo owners. NEMA is rental only, but its units are divided between the building’s “Signature” and more expensive “Skyline” collections.
Residents of either have access to NEMA’s 14th- and 16th-floor amenity offerings (due to double-height ceilings the tower forgoes floor 15). The sheer amount of communal space is impressive. Every aspect seems supersized, even for such a big building with 800 units.
The 14th floor is dominated by a sprawling fitness center, which includes the only full Olympic sized boxing ring in any Chicago residential building. There’s a basketball court, spin room, yoga studio, pilates room, golf simulation with a lounge, squash court and just about every conceivable exercise machine and weights decked out with NEMA branding.
A coworking lounge on the 16th floor has nine glass-walled conference rooms, each outfitted with a flat-screen display and Apple TV. The area is one of the building’s most attractive communal spaces—in part because of its uninterrupted northern views of Grant Park and skyline beyond. There’s also a movie screening room, a kids club, locker rooms, and a dedicated space set up for couples massages.
The 10,000-square-foot outdoor terrace and pool was closed for the season when we visited. But, residents still have access to a 75-foot indoor lap pool which actually extends beyond the tower’s southern facade.
If all of that isn’t enough, NEMA offers another lounge space with a pool table, fireplace, and kitchen. There’s a 21-and-over sports bar, the Station, a nod to the South Loop’s demolished Grand Central Station terminal. It features a wall of TVs, old school skeeball machines, and a self-serve beer tap (pending a city liquor license approval).