Renderings Appear for Vacant Parking Lot at 601 S. Dearborn (Southeast Corner of Dearborn and Harrison)

The stretch of Dearborn between Polk and Ida B. Wells is the heart of Printers Row.  It's also one of the more interesting visual stretches of the South Loop given it's historic architecture and Dearborn Station's iconic clock tower staring down the street.

We've always maintained that Dearborn was the most likely candidate to serve as a unique, neighborhood defining retail strip.  In recent years, much progress has been made as some of the vacant lots have been built on (see the just opened Roots Handmade Pizza and Toto's Market).  

That is why we were interested to see a reader send us an email with plans for the largest and only remaining vacant lot on the street at the Southeast corner of Harrison and Dearborn.  A reader writes and sends us this:

While I'm all for developing this lot, I'm totally against this crap box proposal by FitzGerald for our historic neighborhood. Interested to hear feedback from other Sloopers.

It's hard to know how this would turnout, but the rendering above does feel as if it isn't very "classic" and ultimately wouldn't fit in with the historic look and feel of this stretch of Dearborn.  

Maybe the first couple of floors would?  It seems as if they have a different color so maybe that would be old brick (similar to what Roots and Toto's has further south).

It certainly would be good to develop this lot as it would only further cement this stretch as THE MAJOR restaurant/retail corridor for the neighborhood.  

It looks like the date on these renderings was November 2019.  So they're pretty recent...but pre-pandemic so who knows what the current state of thinking is on this project.

(Hat tip:  KK!)