The Trump International Hotel and Tower, also known as Trump Tower Chicago and locally as the Trump Tower, is a skyscraper condo-hotel in downtown Chicago, Illinois. The building, named after real estate developer Donald Trump, was designed by architect Adrian Smith of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Bovis Lend Lease built the 98-story structure, which reached a height of 1,389 feet (423 m) including its spire, its roof topping out at 1,170 feet (360 m). It is adjacent to the main branch of the Chicago River, with a view of the entry to Lake Michigan beyond a series of bridges over the river. The building received publicity when the winner of the first season of The Apprentice television show, Bill Rancic, chose to manage the construction of the tower.
Trump announced in 2001 that the skyscraper would become the tallest building in the world, but after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the building plans were scaled back, and its design underwent several revisions. When topped out in 2009 it became the second-tallest building in the United States after Chicago’s Willis Tower (formerly known as the Sears Tower). It is expected to be surpassed by One World Trade Center in New York City in the middle of 2013. Trump Tower surpassed Chicago’s John Hancock Center as the building with the world’s highest residence above ground-level and held this title until the completion of the Burj Khalifa. As of 2011 it is the tenth-tallest building in the world.
The design of the building includes, from the ground up, retail space, a parking garage, a hotel, and condominiums. The 339-room hotel opened for business with limited accommodations and services on January 30, 2008. April 28 of that year marked the grand opening with full accommodation and services. A restaurant on the 16th floor, named Sixteen, opened in early 2008 to favorable reviews. The building topped out in late 2008 and construction was completed in 2009. The hotel is one of four in Chicago with a four- or five-star rating, and the building hosts a restaurant that is one of nine restaurants in the city with either a four- or five-star rating, according to the Forbes Travel Guide
Location :
The tower is situated at 401 North Wabash Avenue in the River North Gallery District, part of the Near North Side community area of Chicago. The building occupies the site vacated by the Chicago Sun-Times, one of the city’s two major newspapers, and its location within the River North Gallery District places it in the neighborhood that has had a high concentration of art galleries since the 1980s. The site, at the foot of Rush Street, is located on the north side of the Chicago River just west of the Wrigley Building and the Michigan Avenue Bridge, and just east of Marina City and 330 North Wabash The building is close to numerous Chicago landmarks; it borders the Michigan-Wacker District, which is a Registered Historic District. Parts of the building are visible throughout the city, and the entire length of the building is visible from Chicago River waterway traffic, as well as from locations to the east along the river, such as the mouth of Lake Michigan, the Lake Shore Drive Overpass, and the Columbus Drive Bridge.
The building is across the Chicago River from the Chicago Loop, the city’s business district. It is a block away from the southern end of the Magnificent Mile portion of Michigan Avenue. The restaurant on the 16th floor, which is named Sixteen, has a clear view of the Chicago River’s entrance to Lake Michigan and of the four buildings completed in the 1920s that flank the Michigan Avenue Bridge (Wrigley Building, Tribune Tower, 333 North Michigan, and 360 North Michigan).
Design and architecture :
The design of the building incorporates three setback features designed to provide visual continuity with the surrounding skyline, each reflecting the height of a nearby building. The first setback, on the east side of the building, aligns with the cornice line of the Wrigley Building to the east; the second, on the west side, aligns with River Plaza to the north and with the Marina City Towers to the west. The third setback, on the east side, relates to 330 North Wabash building (formerly known as IBM Plaza). However, some views distort the alignment of the second setback.a[›] The setbacks and rounded edges of the building combat vortex formation which may occur in the “Windy City”. The body of the building is raised 30 feet (9.1 m) above the main Wabash entrance and 70 feet (21 m) above the Chicago River.[12] The building uses clear low-emissivity coated glass and a curved wing-shaped polished stainless steel mullion system that projects 9 inches (23 cm) from the glass line. It incorporates a brushed stainless steel spandrel panels and clear anodized aluminum.
The building has 2,600,000 square feet (240,000 m2) of floor space, rises to 92 stories, and houses 486 luxury residential condominiums. These include studio apartments, a mixture of suites with one to four bedrooms, and five-bedroom penthouses. The tower also features a luxury hotel condominium with 339 guest rooms. The building includes, from the ground up, retail space, a parking garage, a hotel, and condominiums. The 3rd through 12th floors house lobbies, retail space, and the parking garage; the 14th floor and its mezzanine hosts a health club and spa. The 17th floor through the 27th-floor mezzanine contain hotel condominiums and executive lounges. The 28th through 85th floors have residential condominiums, and the 86th through 89th floors have penthouses. A 1.2-acre (4,900 m2) riverfront park and riverwalk, along a 500-foot (150 m) space in the area adjacent to the building to the east, was opened in the first half of 2010. The park facilitates public assembly and entertainment activity while linking the building effectively with aquatic commuters.
In 2011, The riverfront park landscaping surrounding the building, which is referred to as Trump Plaza and Riverwalk or sometimes just Trump Plaza, became the subject of controversy. In 2010, the Plaza had earned special recognition at the Mayor Daley’s Landscape Awards. The press release noted the landscaping for “for their magnificent new civic landscape that is a poetic interpretation of native Illinois that seems at once sophisticated and familiar.” However, in 2011, the award-winning plantings of small sumac trees, ferns and native grasses with yellow, orange and red hues were removed and replaced with evergreens like junipers and boxwoods, pieces of gray stone, and purple perennials (catmint and salvia), which may require significantly less watering. To add to the controversy the planting was accompanied by a plan to light the trees to attract nighttime park visitors in conflict with the “dark skies” movement to reduce light pollution to facilitate better stargazing.
The building surpassed the record for containing the world’s highest residence above ground-level, which had been held since 1969 by the nearby John Hancock Center. Because the Trump Tower has both hotel condominiums and residential condominiums, it does not contest the record held by the 80-story Q1 Tower in the Gold Coast, Australia, which, at 322.5 meters (1,058 ft), is the tallest all-residential building.
Features :
According to the Forbes Travel Guide: 2010 City Guide: Chicago, the building hosts one of the seven four-star restaurants in the city and one of the three four-star spas. The hotel is one of two four star hotels. In 2010 Chicago had two five-star hotels and two five-star restaurants.
Hotel :
The original plan was to have a partial opening of three of the hotel’s floors on December 3, 2007, with a grand opening to follow. The interim ceremony, however, was delayed until January 30, 2008, while the City of Chicago granted occupancy approval for the staff of the hotel in the first 27 floors. Four floors of guest rooms were opened, comprising 125 of the planned 339 rooms. By January 30, construction on the exterior of the building had passed the 53rd floor. The grand opening of the hotel, including amenities, originally scheduled for March 17, 2008, took place on April 28, 2008. Pulitzer-Prize-winning Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin faults the zebrawood paneling in the hotel lobby, but another Tribune reporter praises the hotel for its “understated, contemporary look, distinguished by stunning views”.
Restaurants :
On the 16th floor, a restaurant named Sixteen opened in early February 2008, and an outdoor patio terrace, named The Terrace at Trump, opened on June 25, 2009 following the completion of construction The restaurant opened to favorable reviews for its cuisine, decor, location, architecture, and view. Sixteen, which was designed by Joe Valerio, is described architecturally as a sequence of spaces that do not reveal themselves at once, but rather in “procession”. The restaurant’s foyer is T-shaped, and a passageway to the hotel is lined with floor-to-ceiling architectural bronze wine racks in opposing red and white wine rooms. The passageway leads to views—praised by Kamin—that showcase the Wrigley Building clock tower and the Tribune Tower’s flying buttresses. Kamin notes that these views are “more intimate” than the panoramic ones of the Signature Room, a restaurant near the top of the Hancock Center. The views are described as equally impressive by day and by night. The main part of the procession is the Tower Room, a dining room with a 30-foot (9.1 m) dome-shaped ceiling made of West African wood. The dome is furnished with Swarovski chandeliers and incorporates mirrors so that all diners can experience the view. The Terrace, whose opening was reported on Reuters, has views of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan as well as Navy Pier’s seasonal Wednesday and Saturday evening fireworks and was designed for al fresco dining. Located on the mezzanine level, the hotel bar named Rebar bar opened on April 18, 2008.
Spa :
The 23,000-square-foot (2,100 m2) spa, named The Spa at Trump, opened in late March 2008. The spa offers gemstone-infused (diamond, ruby, or sapphire) oil massages, a “robe menu”, hydrating masques, exfoliating salts and the “Deluge shower”. The spa features a health club with an indoor pool, eleven treatment rooms, a private couples treatment suite, Swiss shower, and saunas. The Citysearch editorial review described this as the “Bentley of hotel spas”. A Chicago Tribune critic spoke of the spa in positive terms for both the treatment and the physical spa itself. The Spa at Trump can be accessed from a large circular staircase inside the hotel, enabling its customers to access the facility from specially designed spa guest rooms without using the elevator.
Design history :
In July 2001, when Donald Trump announced plans for the site of the former seven-story Sun-Times Building, the tower was expected to reach a height of 1,500 feet (460 m), which would have made it the world’s tallest building. It was expected to contain between 2,400,000 and 3,100,000 square feet (220,000 and 290,000 m2) of floor space and cost about $77 million just for the property rights. Three architectural firms were considered: Lohan Associates, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill; Trump selected Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in August 2001. Adrian Smith, who had previously designed the Jin Mao Tower, headed the SOM team, giving Chicago a third skyscraper from the same firm which had previously designed the Willis Tower and the Hancock Center.
After the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001, Trump reduced the planned height to 78 stories and 1,073 feet (327 m), to reduce the risk of similar attacks. Time magazine reported that a meeting between Smith and Trump about erecting the tallest building in Chicago was taking place at the actual time of the attacks. Some international news sources later claimed that the planned tower height was reduced to 900 feet (270 m) after the original plans called for a 150-story building that would reach 2,000 feet (610 m). These claims are supported by computer renderings from 1999 of the proposed skyscraper, shown in the Chicago Tribune in 2005.
The building’s 1,073-foot (327 m) design was first released in December 2001. However, the first design did not meet with approval from other architects, or from the residents of Chicago. A subsequent revision in July 2002 resulted in an 86-floor design for use as an office and residential structure, similar to the current design which is, however, for a different combination of uses. Smith’s 2002 plans put broadcast antennae (multiple communications dishes) at the top of the building. A revised 90-story, 1,125 feet (343 m) plan was unveiled in September 2003 for a building including condominiums, office space, a “condominium hotel”, retail stores, and restaurants. In January 2004, another revision changed floors 17 through 26 from offices into condominiums and hotel rooms. In his May 2004 plan, Smith decided to top the building with an ornamental spire instead of communications dishes. These dishes, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, would not have counted toward the building’s height. The spire, however, will count, raising the tower’s height to 1,300 feet (396 m). At one point in 2005, Trump aspired to build a slightly taller building that would surpass the Sears Tower as the nation’s tallest building, but Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley was against the plan. Eventually, Smith settled on a design with a height of 1,362 feet (415 m), which was the height of 2 World Trade Center, the shorter of the former twin World Trade Center towers. This height makes the Tower the second tallest in the United States after Sears Tower.
Construction :
Bill Rancic, The Apprentice’s season one winner in 2004, was originally hired to manage the project for a $250,000 salary. Rancic’s title was President of the Trump International Hotel and Tower, but the title was somewhat misleading, because he was in fact learning on the job as an “Apprentice”. Rancic’s contract was renewed after his first year, but in September 2005 it appeared that his employment with Trump would finish at the end of his second year in April 2006.During 2005 Donald Trump, Jr., who had been involved in the building since its earliest stages in 1999, was overseeing the construction with weekly visits, while Rancic worked on sales and marketing. In December 2005, Rancic made it clear that he wanted to continue working for Trump, and in April 2006 his contract was renewed for a third year. In that year Donald Trump’s children began to assume prominent public roles as in the Trump Organization; by January 2007 all three adult Trump children (Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump) were executives in the acquisitions and development division of the organization. By the time the Chicago Trump Tower’s hotel opened in the building in January 2008, Donald Trump and his three adult children were in the spotlight, overseeing the construction.
Bovis Lend Lease, noted for work on Disneyland Paris, Petronas Towers, and the Time Warner Center, was the construction company. James McHugh Construction Co, the concrete subcontractor, implemented a comprehensive formwork for the construction of the building. At the completion of construction the building was the tallest formwork structure in the world, and follows in the footsteps of its neighbor, Marina City, as well as Chicago’s Two Prudential Plaza, as past recordholders. Concrete moulding was used, because using a traditional ironwork structure would have required a building footprint that would have been too big for the property size, proportional to the height of the designed building. A steel frame would have had to be 25 feet (7.6 m) wider to have supported a building of this proportion. Concrete will counteract the force of wind with the force of gravity of the 360,000-short-ton (330,000 t) building. A new chemical process that leveraged more fluid liquid concrete facilitated pumping concrete up several hundred feet to the elevating construction site. Although previous technology limited formwork to 700 feet (210 m), this technology permitted the pumping of concrete 1,700 feet (520 m) high.
The building is cantilevered into a section of 420 million-year-old limestone bedrock 110 feet (34 m) underground. It uses 4-foot (1.2 m)-wide stilt-like pillars that were drilled beneath the building. Every 30 feet (9.1 m) around its perimeter, steel-reinforced concrete was poured into these holes to form the structural support.[11] On top of these caisson shafts and pillars, an 8,400-short-ton (7,600 t) concrete pad foundation was built to support the building’s spine. The building has 241 caissons, and the majority of the caissons only descend 75 feet (23 m) into hard clay. However, 57 of them go an additional 35 feet (11 m) into the ground, including 6 feet (1.8 m) of bedrock. The concrete spine uses five I-beam-shaped walls and exterior columns, narrowing to two as the building rises. Each floor is separated by a concrete slab, and stainless steel, glass, and aluminum panels are attached to each floor. 50,000 short tons (45,000 t) of reinforcing steel bars, called rebar, support the hotel. The extensive use of concrete makes the building more fireproof. Of the $600 million construction budget, $130 million was earmarked for the James McHugh Construction Co, who handled the 180,000-cubic-yard (140,000 m3) concrete-only portion of the job.
Two earlier business decisions by the Chicago Sun-Times led to substantial savings of time and money during the Trump Tower’s construction. The original 1950s sea wall was built by the newspaper company to bomb-shelter thickness, to withstand a Cold War attack, and thus did not have to be broken down and rebuilt. Furthermore, the company decided in the 1970s to switch from petroleum-based to soy-based ink, which reduced ground pollution from the printing plant. This considerably reduced the costs and time for cleaning up the site prior to building anew.
On August 16, 2008, construction crews made the last major concrete pour to top off the Trump tower’s concrete core, which was commemorated with an unofficial ceremony. To celebrate the milestone, a yellow tower crane raised a bucket full of concrete and an American flag to the rooftop of the skyscraper. Another ceremony occurred on August 19, when construction supervisors, structural engineers and company representatives from McHugh Construction made a minor concrete pour at the top of the Trump tower. Though Donald Trump was absent from both of these ceremonies, he, Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric Trump attended the topping off party on September 24, 2008. Original plans called for the windows to be completed and the spire erected in October 2008. However, the spire installation was delayed through high winds in December 2008, and was finally completed on January 3, 2009. Kamin’s critical opinion is that the spire is not aesthetically complementary.
At the September 2008 topping off ceremony, Donald Trump marketed his hotel by expressing doubts about the Chicago Spire ever being completed due to the financial crisis of 2007–2009. Trump’s hotel was 25% unsold at the time of the ceremony, and was expected to need the mid-2009 construction loan extension that has caused legal complications. However, Donald, Jr. said that they were fortunate to complete the project, while the Spire and Waterview Tower were among developments hit by the economic slowdown that followed the financial crisis. Occupancy had begun on lower-floor condominiums at the time of the ceremony.
Residents of the Trump building are zoned to Chicago Public Schools. and more specifically to Ogden School and Wells Community Academy High School.
Height :
The Trump International Hotel and Tower rises 1,362 feet (415 m) from the building’s main entrance on Wabash Avenue to the tip of the architectural spire. Upon its completion in 2009, the building became the seventh-tallest building in the world, behind the 1,380-foot (421 m) Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai, People’s Republic of China. On November 17, 2009, however, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), which composes rankings of the tallest skyscrapers in the world based on various criteria, changed its standard for measuring a building’s height. Prior to this change, a building’s architectural height was calculated from the main entrance to the tip of the spire; new standards measured from the lowest open-air pedestrian level of a building. As the Trump International Hotel and Tower has a riverwalk entrance and pedestrian level 27 feet (8 m) below the building’s Wabash Avenue entrance, the skyscraper’s official height was recalculated as 1,389 feet (423 m) without a physical addition to the structure. According to the CTBUH, the recalculated height also made the tower the sixth-tallest building in the world, surpassing the Jin Mao Tower by 9 feet (3 m). In January 2010, the building moved back to its position as seventh-tallest with the opening of the 2,717-foot (828 m) Burj Khalifa in Dubai. As of 2011 it is the tenth tallest building in the world.
Location:
An impressive addition to the Chicago skyline, the Trump International Hotel & Tower Chicago is located in the heart of downtown, just steps from the city’s most famed dining, shopping and cultural attractions.
Guests will enjoy our prime location, with the Magnificent Mile, Millennium Park, Orchestra Hall and Art Institute all a mere stroll away. Even major transportation stations and highways fall easily within reach. The hotel is simply at the center of it all.
401 N. Wabash Avenue
Chicago, IL 60611
Directions from Chicago O’Hare International Airport :
(27 mins/19.6 miles)
Head north on Mt. Prospect Road toward West Old Higgins Road
Take the 1st right onto IL-72 E/E Touhy Avenue
Slight right at IL-72 E/Lee St
Turn left onto the I-90 E/N-W Tollway E ramp to Chicago E (partial toll road)
Merge onto 1-90E/NW Tollway, continue to follow I-90 E (partial toll road)
Take exit 50B toward Ohio St E
Merge onto Kennedy Expressway
Continue onto W Ohio Street
Turn right at North State Street
Contact :
Phone: 312 588 8000 |
Reservations: 877 458 7867 |
http://www.trumpchicago.com/
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