A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held for the completion of the $500 million renovation project on the Chicago Willis Tower, an office building in downtown Chicago, owned by the New York-based Blackstone Inc.
Standing at 110 stories, the Chicago Willis Tower is the tallest building to have achieved the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) platinum certification. It was purchased in 2015 for $1.3 billion, and has since undergone renovations for about five years. The entire building occupies about 4.5 million square feet of space, which is already 85% occupied and has more than 100 tenants, according to a Willis Tower spokesman Ed Fanselow.
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The redevelopment of the 1,450-foot tall Chicago Willis Tower included the construction of a 300,000-square-foot outdoor rooftop terrace, accommodating three beehives with 60,000 bees in wooden boxes. This sits above a 300,000-square-foot ground-level retail, dining and entertainment market called the Catalog; a 5-story structure which was previously an outdoor courtyard.
The renovations for the Chicago Willis tower also involved an upgrade of the building’s unique skydeck observatory, as well as the addition of 150,000 square feet of amenities for tenants. Some of the featured amenities include a standard fitness center spanning 300 Square feet; the Altitude Café lounge; the Tower Bar and Cafe, and steel room for events programming and gathering space. Tenants will also have access to a Metropolitan private club and event venue.
The Chicago Willis Tower renovation project was executed by the Chicago-based Clayco, who served as the general contractor. Gensler was in charge of designing the exterior façade at the base, while SKB Architecture handled the designs for the three new building entries. Some of the tenants proposed to occupy the Catalog include Starbucks, Do-Rite Donuts & Chicken, Sushi-San and Sweetgreen, Joe & the Juice, Shake Schack, Foxtrot, and Brown Bag Seafood Co. Other restaurants include Tortazo by Rick Bayless, the Urbanspace food hall and Kindling, a live-fire restaurant two stories high from Chicago’s 50/50 Group. The Catalog Market space also accommodates Convene’s largest Chicago location for events and meetings and will add a permanent experiential art exhibit called Color Factory in the coming month.
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