Wrigleyville project is no mall invasion; foes' worst fears are unfounded, but planned complex across from Wrigley Field still needs tweaks

Wrigleyville project is no mall invasion; foes' worst fears are unfounded, but planned complex across from Wrigley Field still needs tweaks
By Blair Kamin
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
May 22, 2010
http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/theskyline/2010/05/thousands-of-people-are-getting-all-steamed-up-about-a-controversial-plan-for-an-eight-story-hotel-apartment-and-retail-comp.html


Thousands of people are getting all steamed up about a controversial plan for an eight-story hotel, apartment and retail complex across the street from Wrigley Field. On Facebook, a group called “People Against the ‘Malling of Wrigleyville’ “ is sounding the alarm, as if big-box retailers and a mall named “Cubby World” were about to set up shop at the corner of Clark and Addison, right across the street from the Friendly Confines.

Here’s some friendly advice for these folks, whose numbers as of Friday morning had grown to more than 10,000: Chill!

In reality, the proposed development, which is called Addison Park on Clark, has few attributes of car-oriented suburbia. It is not — repeat, not — a mall. The real issue is what sort of urban character is heading Wrigleyville’s way. Will the design respect the neighborhood’s edgy vitality? Or will it give us something like the banal Chicago of the North Bridge retail district, where one beige-colored, concrete-faced monstrosity lines up against another.

The $100 million proposal, which was designed by Chicago architects Solomon Cordwell Buenz for M&R Development in partnership with SAS Equities, isn’t that bad. But nor is it a particularly compelling work of architecture. It looks, like many a project that has gone through an extensive public review process, as though it were trying very hard not to offend anyone. While its broad outlines are good enough to merit approval from the Chicago Plan Commission next month, it still needs considerable l tweaking before it’s in sync with the vibrant, chock-a-block streetscape of Wrigleyville.

If nothing else, the plan has come a long way since 2008, when the developers floated a plan for two towers (left) that would have loomed menacingly over the ballpark. Part of Wrigley’s glory is that it rises like a cathedral above its namesake neighborhood — its grand scale, curving contours and exposed steel frame majestically differentiating it from the humble brick three-flats and commercial buildings that huddle around it.

The 2008 design would have destroyed that relationship. The new version (below) does a better job of respecting the ballpark’s visual preeminence.

It calls for a low-slung, V-shaped structure that would front on both Addison and Clark, wrapping around a sports merchandise shop (below) and an auto repair business that refuse to budge. A two-story retail podium would adhere to the neighborhood’s prevailing scale. Atop this base would sit 135 rental apartments and a 137-room hotel. The complex would be faced in brick and glass — with no Victorian frou-frou or other nostalgic nods to the past. Solomon Cordwell Buenz’ president, John Lahey, who lives a few blocks north of Wrigley, says the aim was instead “a contemporary building with texture and scale that made it fit into the neighborhood.”

The scale, at least, is right, which helps explain why Lake View Ald. Tom Tunney, 44th, has given the project his blessing. By reducing the proposed design’s height, breaking up its mass, and stressing ground-hugging horizontal lines instead of soaring vertical ones, the architects have done much to make this big building palatable. They have also made it street-friendly and transit-oriented, two qualities rarely associated with suburban malls.

The project’s ground-level stores would be entered directly from the sidewalk, not through an atrium or internal corridors. Its exterior walls would frame a walkable, pedestrian-oriented cityscape, including widened sidewalks. Its 399 parking spaces would even be shoved underground (at considerable cost to the developer). Indeed, by putting the apartments near the Addison elevated station, the plan will encourage residents to use energy-saving mass transit. Green roofs will further boost the project’s drive to attain LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

But there are problems, beginning with the long, visually anemic expanses of brick (left) that the project would foist on Clark and Addison. That prospect is alarming when contrasted with the delightful eclecticism (here a Victorian grace note, there some Art Deco) of the buildings that now occupy the 3500 block of North Clark Street. They would be destroyed to make way for Addison Park on Clark — not a happy trade-off. Even Lahey acknowledges that the architects don’t have the street-level facades right yet. His firm is working on alternatives, though it is not ready to make them public.

Memo to the architects: Give us something other than a banal, blank canvas for retail shops. Right now, the building’s bland base is mall-like even if it isn’t technically a mall.

Problem No. 2: Despite the sensible overall reduction in height, Addison Park on Clark still threatens to upstage Wrigley Field in one sensitive location. Along Addison (left), the complex’s apartments would be set back by just 15 feet, forming a cliff-like wall that would look down on the lowest tier of the ballpark’s wedding-cake-style roofline.

A bigger setback is called for, even if that means making the project taller in mid-block.

Problem No. 3: Addison Park on Clark could have a debilitating impact on Wrigleyville’s city-enlivening mix of uses.

The developers oversimplify when they claim that the project’s site is underutilized. That may be true on Addison, with its ugly surface parking lots and scruffy storefonts (left), but it’s false on Clark, where the row of older buildings harbors a lively collection of locally owned bars, restaurants and the iO Theater.

So it is wrong to dismiss the criticism, voiced by the iO Theater’s owner director Charna Halpern, that Addison Park on Clark would undercut the area’s hip vitality by replacing existing tenants with generic, could-be-anywhere businesses like a Best Buy store.

Locally owned enterprises like the iO Theater are assets, not obstacles, to retaining that vitality. Anything Tunney can do to help them remain on the site after construction (or, at least, in the neighborhood) would be welcome.

Neighborhoods invariably change. The issue here is how Chicago manages that change. The architects and developers deserve credit for the modifications they’ve already made. But they still need to raise the level of their game if they want to avoid sticking Wrigleyville and Wrigley Field with a design that gets only halfway to true urbanity.