block - Valerio Dewalt Train Associates

URBAN INFILL: BLOCK 89
VALERIO DEWALT TRAIN
Block 89, seen in orange with
the Wisconsin State Capitol
due west and Lake Monona
east of the site.
URBAN INFILL: BLOCK 89
MADISON, WISCONSIN
VALERIO DEWALT TRAIN ASSOCIATES
500 North Dearborn
Chicago, Illinois 60654
424 Waverley Street
Palo Alto, California 94301
© Photography Karant + Associates
© Photography Mike Rebholz
© 2011 Valerio Dewalt Train Associates
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
THE STREET AS A STAGE
THE UNDERPINNING OF BLOCK 89
DENSITY AND SUSTAINABILITY
ARCHITECTURE AS URBAN THEATER
“ON THE BLOCK”: AN IN-DEPTH LOOK
33 East Main Detail
INTRODUCTION
Valerio Dewalt Train is a 50 person national architectural
practice with offices in Chicago, Illinois and Palo Alto, California.
Since 1996, the firm has based its practice on the simple idea
that whatever the question, design is the answer. But we also
believe that before you can provide an answer, you have to do the
research to make sure you understand the question.
As designers, we take a research-based approach to the design
process; it is immersive, probing, and specific. We work with a
wide range of clients: institutional, educational, corporate, retail,
entertainment, hospitality, and developers, each client benefits
from the cross-fertilization of ideas between these industries
and as expressed by our URL, “build or die.com”.
The result of our energetic approach is a series of remarkable
projects often produced on very tight budgets and schedules
for many notable organizations; from eBay, to the Kresge
Foundation, the University of Chicago, and Lincoln Properties.
The [original city] design had narrow sidewalks
with the natural landscape bounded by two
lanes of traffic. Working with the City, the
design was inverted, the sidewalks were widened
and landscaped ...
THE STREET AS A STAGE
The City of Madison was platted in 1836 by James Doty. It was a
plan that viewed Madison as a capital city in the tradition of all
the great cities. In this plan the center is Capital Square, a hilltop
composed of an area equal to four city blocks. Four orthogonal
streets and four diagonal streets intersect on this block. In
response, Cass Gilbert’s State Capitol Building has four primary
and four secondary entrances, the only Capitol Building in the
fifty states that has eight main doors. In this plan, Martin Luther
King Jr. Boulevard is the shortest of all of the eight axes leading
to the Capitol. It is only two blocks long from Capital Square to
Monona Terrace, the new civic center envisioned by Frank Lloyd
Wright and only completed in reduced scope in the late 1990’s.
Early in our planning of Block 89, the development of Martin
Luther King, Jr. Boulevard became a major issue. The City wanted
to develop broad landscaped traffic medians. This design had
narrow sidewalks with the natural landscape bounded by two
lanes of traffic. Working with the City, the design was inverted,
the sidewalks were widened and landscaped with a double allée
of trees; the median was eliminated. The fabric of the street
connects the walks and drives of the Capitol building with the
broad plaza of the new civic center which forms a belvedere
overlooking the lake. This fabric extends the materials, lighting
and detailing used around the Capitol Square to reach out to
the lake. As an integrated landscape, the fabric of the street
is extended to entirely surround Block 89 providing a base on
which the block is reconstructed.
Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd
adjacent to One East Main.
Above: One East Main features storefronts looking out onto the streetfront.
Left: Block 89 seen from north east. From left to right: 10 East Doty, Burrows Block, 33 East Main.
Entry to 10 East Doty
THE UNDERPINNING OF BLOCK 89
As a traditional downtown, the rebirth of the urban center has
always been handcuffed by a lack of parking. In a remarkable
example of a public/private partnership, the developer and city
worked together to build a 743 car parking structure located
entirely underground. Except for the thirty foot wide entrance,
the structure is entirely invisible. Paired with two one truck wide
service docks, the sidewalks surrounding Block 89 are entirely
devoted to the pedestrian.
In a remarkable example of a public/
private partnership, the developer
and city worked together to build a
743 car parking structure located
entirely underground.
The infrastructure was thought out in depth to maximize allowable space for tenants above ground. The elevator cores
were mapped out to be continuous through the two new office
buildings into the parking garage.
To realize this design, the five-story One East Main Building and
the seven-story Insurance Building had to be underpinned. In
addition, the historic stone Burrows Block was dismantled and
reconstructed. The elevator cores of the two new office towers,
and the expanded One East Main building all extended through
the underground parking decks.
Block 89 Axon Diagram
10 EAST DOTY
BURROWS BLOCK
33 EAST MAIN
S.
Y.
NE
K
C
PIN
E.
M
AI
N
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.
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DO
TY
ST
.
UNDERGROUND
PARKING
5 levels, 743 stalls
WALGREENS
INSURANCE
BUILDING
(built in 1921)
ONE EAST MAIN
VD
BL
.
JR
G,
N
KI
ER
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T
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Right: 33 East Main
.
Construction almost finished
on 33 E. Main, completing
work on Block 89.
DENSITY AND SUSTAINABILITY
In the beginning, Block 89 was mainly parking lots, under used
properties and marginal buildings. The density was barely 1:1.
The developing masterplan envisioned a city block of significant
density of 1:7.
Block 89 aligns with a developing
recognition that the great suburban
corporate campus is a thing of the
past.
The new corporate environment
is connected to the world by being
connected to the city.
In addition, the Block would be fully integrated. A single central
plant would service the water source heat pumps. In the shoulder
seasons where both cooling and heating would be required in
different zones, waste heat in one zone would be used to provide
heat in another zone and vice versa.
Energy is measured in many ways. Conserving the use of energy
in heating and cooling the building is only the beginning. Block
89 is located at the center of the City of Madison. Commuting
studies comparing Block 89 with a suburban office development
show that energy used in commuting is far less at Block 89.
But Block 89 also aligns with a developing recognition that the
great suburban corporate campus is a thing of the past. It is all
about connectivity on a human level. Isolating a corporate staff
in an idealized suburban environment is not the answer. The
new corporate environment is connected to the world by being
connected to the city.
Block 89 before construction
and renovation of properties.
Diagraming the core of 33 East
Main, with the shell overlayed.
ARCHITECTURE AS URBAN THEATER
First, if the stage is the fabric of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Despite their energy, they simply were not strong enough to
Boulevard, then the architecture of the surrounding blocks
challenge the visual dominance of the Capitol building. This is
become the actors in this modern production. Some of these
as it was and should have been. But in the twentieth century,
actors have been around for years, including the historic
the grain of the square was changed by monumental corporate
Insurance Building, the old JC Penny store and the historic
buildings which assembled the small tracts into single buildings
Burrows Block at the corner of Pinckney and Doty. But the
which subsumed entire blocks. It was our objective to rebuild
majority of Block 89 would be a new invention.
Block 89, not as a single aesthetic statement, but as a series
of individual buildings designed to work together – a chorus of
The backbone of the block would be the historic Insurance
voices.
Building and the Doty Tower that extends the size of the floor
plates. The two corners of the block facing the Capitol would
be anchored by the expanded One East Main building and the
other by the new 33 East Main Building. The massing of the
two corner buildings would preserve a view corridor through the
block to the Capitol for the 10 East Doty Building.
It was our objective to rebuild Block 89,
not as a single aesthetic statement,
but as a series of individual buildings
designed to work together.
The second concept was rooted in both a sensitivity to the “grain”
This approach was more than an aesthetic decision. It reflected
of Capital Square and to the demands of the project schedule.
the process of assembling and constructing the block. The
This approach could be summed up as the “architecture of
capital city is a small market, absorbing office space at a slow
the entrepreneur.” The Capitol is a single monumental object
pace. In addition, the process of assembling the entire block
symbolizing both the primacy and importance of the common
took a long period of time. Due to both these factors, one parcel
good. The blocks fronting on the Capitol were platted as 22’
at a time was released for design and construction. The process
wide plots. Here the nineteenth century entrepreneur would
began in 1986 and was not complete until 2006. Each building
build structures which symbolized both the vitality and the
was completed in its own time. In the end, the schedule of
individuality of their enterprises. The buildings were muscular
development would match the intellectual concept of restoring
and “vocal” rubbing up against one another, each straining to
the entrepreneurial grain of the buildings surrounding the
hold the stage.
Capitol Square.
The Capitol reflects off 33 East Main at night.
10 East Doty, one of the first
new buildings on Block 89,
features a dramatic entry and
curving facade.
33 East Main adds contrast to
Block 89 yet makes the block
cohesive.
The buildings have individual
entries yet connect on the
ground floor to allow visitors to
access the garage.
Because the Capitol view restriction limited the
building’s height to roughly the same dimensions
as its length and width, the design team decided
to work against the sense of a cube and instead
articulate the facade, extending some bays
on the upper floors over the city sidewalk—
encroachments over the public right-of-way
permitted through a long-term air space lease
with the city.
block
On the
J O e V a L e r i O a n D
©BarBara Karant/Karant + assOciates
DaViDJennerJahn
94
U r b a n La n D october 2008
Above: The wedge-shaped addition to the One
East Main building.
Below: A curving brick facade turns the corner
from Doty Street up Pinckney Street toward
Capitol Square.
“ON THE BLOCK”: AN IN-DEPTH LOOK
The following is an article, “On the Block” written by VDTA
principals, Joe Valerio and David Jennerjahn for Urban Land
Magazine, October 2008.
The blocks surrounding Madison, Wisconsin’s Capitol building
once supported a thriving shopping district. But, as has been
the case for downtowns across the country, suburban malls
drew retailers away in the middle of the 20th century, and by
the early 1980s, the downtown retail market had reached
its lowest ebb. Efforts to encourage use of mass transit had
resulted in a scarcity of parking spaces, and no new office
buildings had been built in the downtown area since 1974.
Starting in 1986, however, what began as a relatively smallscale office building project expanded over two decades to
fill an entire city block with 460,000 square feet (42,700 sq m)
of office space and supplemental retail space in a blend of
architectural styles, all supported by 743 underground parking
spaces on five levels. The development of Block 89 is the story
of an unusual public/private partnership between a private
developer and the city, with additional help from the state,
creating a synergy that has helped bring activity back to the
neighborhood around the Capitol.
The project began in 1986, when Urban Land Interests, a Madison
enterprise specializing in adaptive use and the development of
new office, retail, and multifamily properties, secured an option
to purchase three retail properties—JCPenney, Walgreens, and
the Dartmouth Direct clothing store—owned by Northwestern
Mutual Life Insurance Company and located on East Main
Street fronting the southeast side of the Capitol Square.
Renamed One East Main, the building opened in March 1988.
Its large floor plates—a rarity downtown— offered an advantage
over other properties, but there was one significant disadvantage:
only 43 parking spaces in a surface parking lot.
law firm tenants seeking proximity to the Capitol. In 1987, Urban
Land Interests bought the three retail buildings, as well as a
small office building on Martin Luther King, Jr.,Boulevard next
to the JCPenney building. At the time, Urban Land Interests was
negotiating with a large law firm that was interested in having
an office near the Capitol that offered the ability to expand.
Madison officials, interested in sparking regeneration in the
Capitol Square area, were aware that the city was not going
to reach its redevelopment goals for the area by attracting
retailers. Recognizing the need for a public/private partnership
to redevelop the properties, Urban Land Interests made the case
that office uses would generate sufficient pedestrian activity to
support restaurants and, ultimately, some retail space.
The city formed a tax increment financing (TIF) district around
the JCPenney building, and the community development
authority issued redevelopment revenue bonds to help finance
renovation and expansion of the former department store
as an office building. Three financial institutions formed a
consortium to provide credit enhancement to make the bonds
marketable. Urban Land Interests hired the architecture firm
Bowen Williamson Zimmerman of Middleton, Wisconsin, to add
two floors to the three-story JCPenney building and to expand
it horizontally over the site of the former office building on King
Boulevard.
Three months after One East Main opened in June 1988, Urban
Land Interests bought the adjacent seven-story National Mutual
Benefit Insurance Building on King Boulevard—next to the
former office building—primarily because it came with about
50 surface parking spaces that could supplement those at One
East Main. However, as a long-term solution, this still did not
constitute enough parking.
In a fortuitous development, the Capitol’s four wings were about
to undergo extensive renovation, requiring state legislative
agencies to move out. The state chose to move these offices
to One East Main because of its proximity to the Capitol and
other government offices. A crucial opportunity in the state’s
relocation planning was that the Insurance Building, built in the
1920s, had a large ballroom. The Wisconsin State Assembly was
seeking a space large enough to accommodate its legislative
sessions during the three-year renovation of its chambers in the
Capitol, and the ballroom had the capacity and a character that
local hotels could not match. The Insurance Building ballroom
worked so well as temporary quarters for the Assembly that
the Wisconsin State Senate occupied the ballroom for three
years while its wing of the Capitol was being renovated, followed
by the state Supreme Court. The state occupancy did not add
significantly to the demand for parking.
Capitol Square, the seat of state and county government and the
focus of city government, is a financial center, and the University
of Wisconsin campus is nearby. Therefore, though the properties
had been on the market as a package for at least a year, the location
still held great potential for office development, particularly for
For its private sector tenants, who needed room to expand, Urban
Land Interests committed to expand the development over time
and promised to address the parking shortage. At that time, the
intended scope of the project still consisted solely of One East
Main and the Insurance Building. Architecture firms brought
“ON THE BLOCK” URBAN LAND, OCTOBER 2008
in by Urban Land Interests to offer parking solutions proposed
above-ground parking—a solution that was unappealing
because it would create no street-level activity.
The plan sought to incorporate
existing buildings and add news
ones in a manner that would reflect
the architectural rhythm and scale
of downtown.
In addition, development in downtown Madison is restricted to
the height of the base of the colonnade of the Capitol dome—
meaning structures near the Capitol cannot rise more than
about ten stories—so placing parking above ground would
reduce the number of levels that could be devoted to office
space. Then, Kalamazoo, Michigan–based parking consultant
Carl Walker recommended underground parking, which would
allow creation of more than 50,000 square feet (4,600 sq m) of
streetfront retail space.
With this settled on as a solution, Urban Land Interests in
1995 hired the Chicago architecture firm Valerio Dewalt Train
Associates to master plan and design a development that
would incorporate most of the block, taking an approach that
would reflect the character and texture of Capitol Square. The
development was dubbed Block 89 after its number on the city’s
original plat. The master plan sought to incorporate existing
buildings and add new ones in a manner that would reflect
the architectural rhythm and scale of downtown, relying on
the 66-foot (20-m) lot widths of the downtown’s original plat.
Smaller-scale buildings would face the Capitol Square, to avoid
overshadowing the Capitol, and taller ones would be placed at
the back of the block, affording views to the square. The massing
would step back from the sidewalk.
The city’s commitment to working with the developers was
essential. A track record of successful historic renovations and
other projects that reflect an emphasis on high architectural
quality can be an advantage to developers seeking to form
public/ private partnerships for projects like Block 89. Urban
Land Interests had been developing properties in Madison
and elsewhere in Wisconsin since its formation in 1974.
Its principals, Bradley Binkowski and Thomas Neujahr,
had experience with public/private partnerships and with
the adaptive use of historic buildings, and they focused on
holding and managing properties over the long term. They
also understood that the local market was one of incremental
growth and would be able to absorb only a certain amount of
office space at a time.
Urban Land Interests had also already worked with the city
on the other side of the Capitol Square in 1990 and 1991 to
establish a public/private partnership and create an aboveground parking ramp for a former four-story department
store that it was expanding into a ten-story office building. The
bonds were issued by the Madison Community Development
Authority, which owns the parking facility and leases it to the
city, which in turn leases it to Urban Land Interests.
This arrangement kept the parking ramp off the tax roll and
permitted the bonds to be marketed without an additional credit
enhancement, which reduced the ramp’s operating deficit. Urban
Land Interests is fully responsible for all the costs of operating
and maintaining the facility. At the end of the lease term, the
company has the right to buy the parking ramp for $1 plus the
accrued payments in lieu of taxes. This became a model for the
financing of the underground parking ramp at Block 89.
For Block 89, because of the cost of legal, architectural,
engineering, and other work necessary to obtain design approval
and public permitting, Urban Land Interests needed to be
assured of the city’s participation in financing and other matters
before moving beyond schematic design. In 1995, Urban Land
Interests and Madison officials developed a comfort resolution
identifying the key elements of the Block 89 development to
which the city would need to commit. This resolution required
the city to use condemnation if necessary to acquire property
on the block through eminent domain, to form a TIF district, to
devote revenues from the district to pay a part of the parking
bond debt service, to issue taxable parking revenue bonds, and
generally to adopt the same financing structure that Urban
Land Interests had pioneered with the city on the other side of
the Capitol Square.
Following adoption of the resolution, Urban Land Interests
bought additional properties on East Main Street, and early
in 1996 acquired buildings on South Pinckney Street, on the
other side of the block from King Boulevard, including the
Burrows Block, a historic building constructed in 1850. The
city exercised its right of eminent domain to buy out one of the
owners of the Burrows Block. The majority of the parking for
Block 89 was financed at the end of 1996. The parking beneath
a parcel at the northern corner of the block, owned by an
outside party, was not financed until June 1998, a year and a
half after Urban Land Interests started constructing the main
parking. The community development authority sold $20.6
million in taxable revenue bonds to finance the first phase of
parking ramp construction, which began in 1996; the second
stage was financed by an additional $6.8 million bond issue,
and construction began in 1998.
Urban Land Interests developed the parking ramp under a
fixed-price contract for the community development authority,
which leases it to the city, which leases it back to an affiliate
of Urban Land Interests. The garage has generally operated at
a loss of about $500,000 per year, which Urban Land Interests
allocates as an expense to the office buildings in the block.
Under the city’s TIF program, the increase in property taxes that
the project generates pays a portion of the debt service on the
bonds issued for the parking construction. Often cities apply the
increase in property taxes to other city services, but in this case
the development could not have been executed without the city’s
TIF contributions. Once the bonds are paid off, the incremental
tax revenue continues to go to the city, county, school district,
and other government units.
Until 1998, one piece of the block was still owned by another
party—the Kresge building at the corner of East Main and South
Pinckney streets, which was being leased to the state for a
daycare facility. The state had an option in its lease to buy the
Kresge property so it could expand the underground parking
beneath the site and construct a new building to house the state
law library. The state bought the property in 1998 and conveyed
the subterranean rights to the community development
authority, which financed expansion of the underground parking
structure on the site. The state subsequently decided to build
its law library elsewhere, and in 2000, Urban Land Interests
purchased the air rights in order to build an office building. If the
state had not acquired the Kresge site, Block 89’s underground
parking scheme would still have worked—in the shape of
an L—but vehicle circulation was made easier by the ability
to expand the parking. The completed 743-car underground
parking ramp has five levels.
In addition to having extensive underground parking, Block
89 is unusual in the degree of interconnectivity provided by
its floor plates. The site slopes down from the Capitol Square
to Doty Street by about one floor level. When developing the
master plan for the site, the architects realized that it would be
possible to create a floor plate at the level of One East Main’s
second floor that would cover almost the entire block, becoming
the third floor on the Doty Street side. This allows tenants an
unusual degree of flexibility for horizontal expansion.
While tenants often lease space that flows between two
adjacent buildings, the configuration at Block 89 would allow
a tenant to lease a 50,000-square-foot (4,600-sq-m) space
spreading across three buildings, all on the same level. The
size of floor plates and the flexibility is particularly valuable
for law firms, which prefer to grow horizontally. The Insurance
Building’s floor plates did not allow alignment at the second
floor, because of the ballroom, but floors three through seven
are connected with the adjacent new building at 10 East Doty.
“ON THE BLOCK” URBAN LAND, OCTOBER 2008
Block 89 Ground Floor Plan
MAIN STREET
1
8
9
10
MLK JR
BLVD.
PINCKNEY
STREET
7
2
4
6
5
DOTY STREET
1 33 East Main
2 Marigold Kitchen
3 Burrows Block Retail
4 Parking Garage
5 10 East Doty
6 Insurance Building
7 Opera House Restaurant
8 One East Main (Original)
9 One East Main (Addition)
10 Walgreens
3
On its other side, the Insurance Building is connected with One
East Main on two floors, with a few stairs required to navigate
the difference in floor levels.
The building lobbies link to each other via a service corridor,
and the underground parking level connects to the buildings
via three elevator cores—one at One East Main, one at a
new office building constructed at 35 East Main (the former
Kresge building site), and one at 10 East Doty—so that users
can park on any level and take the elevator directly to their
destination, which is a particular advantage in winter. A fourth,
existing elevator core in the Insurance Building does not
connect directly to parking, but the elevator core for 10 East
Doty is situated at the building’s juncture with the Insurance
Building, giving that structure direct elevator access from the
underground parking.
“Once we realized the scope of this project, getting the
infrastructure right became very important—having that
service core spine for the block, having a loading dock at each
end, and having the elevator cores so that in almost every case
people can come right up from the parking level to the office
floor,” says Binkowski, cofounder of Urban Land Interests. All
those things, which are not necessarily reflected in the exterior
architecture, are nevertheless very important to our tenants.”
In early 2005, construction began on a nine-story, 133,000
square-foot (12,400 sq-m) office building on the site of the
former Kresge building. Dubbed 33 East Main, it was completed
in 2006, financed through a $22 million New Markets Tax
Credit transaction. The design team and developers sought a
distinctive, contemporary appearance appropriate to its status
as the final piece of the development.
Because the Capitol view restriction limited the building’s
height to roughly the same dimensions as its length and width,
the design team decided to work against the sense of a cube and
instead articulate the facade, extending some bays on the upper
floors over the city sidewalk— encroachments over the public
right-of-way permitted through a long-term air space lease
with the city. Other bays were recessed. This approach also
had the advantage of adding to the size of the floor plates and
providing more opportunities to create corner offices. The base
of the building incorporates Minnesota limestone elements that
link it visually to the other buildings on the block.
Above: 10 E. Doty, before 33 E. Main was constructed.
Below: 33 E. Main under construction.
“ON THE BLOCK” URBAN LAND, OCTOBER 2008
Opera House, one of the initial tenants of the renewed Block 89,
designed by Valerio Dewalt Train.
HBG New Media, one of numerous tenant spaces VDTA completed at Block 89.
“ON THE BLOCK” URBAN LAND, OCTOBER 2008
Having the project include a variety
of small-scale buildings, each with
its own architectural identity, allows
the Capitol to remain the dominant
structure downtown.
Having the project include a variety of small-scale buildings,
each with its own architectural identity, allows the Capitol to
remain the dominant structure downtown. Crucial to Block
89’s varied appearance was the city’s willingness to embrace
modernist architecture. A catalyst for that acceptance was the
Opera House restaurant, which was leasing space in the Burrows
Block building and became part of the project early on.
When Urban Land Interests acquired the building, it created
a new space on King Boulevard for the restaurant with a
glass facade and a complex aluminum canopy that defined
the business. Newspaper articles touted the arrival of
contemporary design in Madison, and customers liked the
views to the street. The popularity of the small restaurant
space’s design helped smooth the way for the other
contemporary designs that came later. Even the Walgreens
building has a sculptural top that
gives it presence in the block.
The Burrows Block, in contrast, was originally intended to
be disassembled and rebuilt using the original stone after
construction of the parking garage beneath it. However, the
stone turned out to be too brittle and porous, so the facade
was recreated with new Minnesota limestone of the same
color and texture. The project cost about $100 million—the
parking ramp more than $27 million; One East Main, $22
million; the Insurance Building/10 East Doty, $24 million; and
33 East Main, $29 million. Average rents for office spaces are
$28 to $32 per square foot ($301 to $344 per sq m), including
all expenses except tenant electricity and parking. Gross retail
rents are $21 to $30 per square foot ($226 to $323 per sq m)
triple net leases.
Obtaining new retail tenants has continued to be a challenge.
“We haven’t achieved the level of activity that we wanted to at the
sidewalk level,” says Neujahr, the other cofounder of Urban Land
Interests. “That’s probably been the hardest part of this project.
We thought it would be the easiest, because if you’re building a
project that houses 2,000 employees at a location of this quality,
the expectation was that the retail space would be easier to
fill.” The existing businesses—three restaurants, two banks,
Walgreens, Starbucks, and others—are prospering, however, and
Block 89’s office space is currently more than 90 percent leased.
In a second-tier city, local developers may be better positioned
to extract the most profit from this kind of mixed-use
project because they are more likely than large, out-of-town
development companies to hold properties for the long term.
Knowing that the owner is remaining involved over the long
haul can give tenants confidence. The ability to develop Block
89 over a 20-year period also allowed Urban Land Interests to
take risks incrementally.
When the company entered into the riskiest, largest piece of
the development, it already had the Insurance Building and
One East Main almost fully leased, as well as the expanded
Walgreens, which helped give the city the confidence to commit
to help with the parking.
“When we started this, we didn’t know what the scope of Block
89 would be,” says Binkowski. “We were trying to renovate the
old JCPenney department store and renovate the Insurance
Building next to it. We ended up with a block of property under
common ownership and a complex with an unusually extensive
integration of parking and floor plates.”
Serendipity played a role in bringing Block 89 to fruition, but if
other projects of this complexity are to be built, they likely also
will require strong public/private partnerships, with developers
willing to spend money in the public interest and cities willing
to contribute financial assistance for otherwise prohibitively
expensive components such as underground parking.
VALERIO DEWALT TRAIN ASSOCIATES
500 North Dearborn
Chicago, Illinois 60654
424 Waverley Street
Palo Alto, California 94301
© Photography Karant + Associates
© Photography Mike Rebholz
© 2011 Valerio Dewalt Train Associates
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