After two years of community meetings, a Chicago developer is providing a colorful first public look at an apartment high-rise it envisions near the city’s largest park and Lake Michigan.
Fern Hill unveiled on Tuesday the most details to date for a North Side site at 1600 N. LaSalle Drive, as well as the first renderings unveiled for a 500-unit apartment tower that would stand out for its eye-catching, multicolored exterior.
It’s a milestone for Fern Hill, but the process didn’t play out as expected.
Fern Hill’s interest in the project first emerged in September 2021. Later that month, the firm initially said globetrotting architect David Adjaye, who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2017, planned to design the project, which would have been his first in Chicago.
That was a coup for the low-key developer until a Financial Times report in July in which three unnamed former female employees of his London-based architecture firm accused Adjaye of sexually harassing and assaulting women. That led Adjaye to step away from projects including the one in Chicago.
GREC Architects, which already was the local architect of record, then began drawing up a new design for the tower overlooking Lincoln Park and the lake.
The project’s new details emerged during a virtual meeting hosted by Second Ward Alderman Brian Hopkins, whose support — and eventually the full City Council’s — Fern Hill will need to build the 395-foot-tall tower along the edge of the wealthy Old Town, Lincoln Park and Gold Coast neighborhoods.
Images of the proposed 36-story tower show a unique exterior, with metal fins around the windows painted with shades of blue, yellow and orange, a design that would especially stand out from a recent wave of glassy towers in Chicago.
Anderson said that concept, by GREC, is a good fit in Old Town, known for its annual arts festival and its architecture.
“We’re asking, ‘How do we paint this form so it’s not just a typical glass high-rise?’” Anderson told CoStar News before the meeting.
Feedback First
Hopkins has yet to take a public stance on the estimated $250 million project, which could become a test case for the way developers seek community buy-in for projects. The last community meeting was held early this year.
Fern Hill, led by former Related Midwest executive Nick Anderson, took the unusual approach of holding public meetings and seeking feedback regarding what it might build on several properties it controls in the area, without first providing any details of what it hoped to construct.
Typically, developers in Chicago unveil a specific proposal and renderings and receive feedback.
Anderson said it took the new approach to try to make the process more collaborative with the neighborhood and less contentious than what is often seen during the process to gain zoning approval.
The developer also invited neighboring property owners to become part of the project, with Walgreens taking the offer. Walgreens has offered to sell its building at 1601 N. Wells St. to Fern Hill, while agreeing to become a long-term tenant in a new store that would be at the base of the apartment tower, Anderson said.
By demolishing the Stanley Tigerman-designed brick drugstore, Fern Hill would more than double the size of the development site to 34,000 square feet. The other part of the site is a surface parking lot owned by The Moody Church, which is partnering with Fern Hill on a broader redevelopment of the area that eventually could create a low-rise extension of its campus across the street from Fern Hill’s apartment tower. The church’s expansion would replace gas stations on each side of its main structure, which are owned by Fern Hill.
Neighbors also have been encouraging Fern Hill to find a new grocer to fill the former Treasure Island building it owns at 1635 to 1639 N. Wells. Anderson said it would be easier to attract a new grocery store as part of a broader redevelopment in the area that would increase residents and foot traffic.
The church also would gain 300 parking spaces as part of the Fern Hill project, which would include the 36-story building and a low-rise structure next to it at LaSalle and North Avenue for parking, retail space and an entrance to the residential tower.
“We think we’re putting out something that’s thoughtful,” Anderson said. “I’m incredibly proud to have accomplished this.”
Anderson said Fern Hill’s focus was to move the project’s only high-rise onto a single site, protecting the lake view of existing towers and continuing appropriate spacing between the tallest buildings in the area, which include the 420-foot-tall Eugenie Terrace, 400-foot-tall James Kilmer condo tower and the 390-foot-tall 1660 N. LaSalle tower.
Fern Hill will seek further input from neighbors on the color palette of the tower, which could be switched to include red, pink, green and other colors. The developer provided samples of exterior color schemes pulled from impressionist paintings such as Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies” series.
“People have used color to really express themselves in this neighborhood,” Anderson said. “Color is everywhere. There is no better neighborhood to do this than Old Town.”