With its 62-acre megadevelopment along the Chicago River already years in the making, Related Midwest's property is part of a subtle new pitch to bring a White Sox ballpark to the site.
About half a year after Related Midwest first unveiled renderings for a proposed ballpark for Chicago’s American League baseball team on the South Loop land, the outline of a field has mysteriously taken shape near the middle of The 78 site.
The image, apparently carved into dirt, mirrors the exact location and angle of the proposed ballpark, teasing how it would look within the context of the high-profile site.
The field adds intrigue to what is already one of the most ambitious real estate projects ever drawn up in the nation’s third-largest city.
It’s unclear exactly when the sketched field was created, who put it there or why it was done.
Related Midwest, which is part of industry titan Related Cos., declined to comment to CoStar News. The White Sox deferred to Related Midwest and declined to comment.
A visualization of the field is likely nothing more than a conversation starter for now, as Related Midwest and the MLB team owned by Jerry Reinsdorf face a long road ahead to gain public support — and major public dollars — to fund a White Sox move about 2 miles north of the team’s longtime home in the Bridgeport neighborhood.
It’s at least the second time this Related Midwest property has raised eyebrows and stirred imaginations.
Back in 2018, during Chicago’s failed effort to land Amazon’s so-called HQ2, a dome similar to the Amazon Spheres seen on the company’s Seattle headquarters campus arrived unannounced on The 78, fueling speculation that it could be a hint about Amazon’s interest in the site.
Related Midwest later quelled those rumors by telling real estate website Curbed Chicago that it was simply an operations center to be used as part of the now-completed construction of a roadway through the middle of the site connecting the South Loop and Chinatown.
Though Amazon representatives visited The 78 multiple times, the company late that year announced it would split the massive HQ2 project between New York and the Washington, D.C., area.
Plans for New York were later scrapped, and Amazon last year paused construction of the second phase of construction in Arlington, Virginia.
A massive Amazon corporate campus and the more recent talks with the White Sox are among several plans that Related Midwest has floated for the half-mile-long riverfront site with skyline views.
The site also has been discussed as a potential location for Chicago’s long-planned casino, which is bound for a River West site, and for a new Chicago Bears stadium. The NFL team is now focused on a site near its longtime Soldier Field home along Lake Michigan in the South Loop.
Well before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Related Midwest won city approval to build skyscrapers as tall as 950 feet on the site. The initial plan called for a mix of office, residential, hotel, retail, entertainment and restaurant space.
Newer renderings unveiled in February depicted areas along the river for water taxis and other boats to dock at a White Sox ballpark. Plans for the site also include a new train station on the Chicago Transit Authority’s Red Line.
The University of Illinois-led Discovery Partners Institute and other buildings are planned south of the potential ballpark, with other new towers envisioned north of the sports venue.
Related Midwest’s long-vacant former rail yard site is bordered by the river, Roosevelt Road, Clark Street and Ping Tom Park in Chinatown. Part of the site was created in the 1920s when a curved section of the river was straightened to help the flow of barge traffic.
The 78’s name was chosen because the developer envisions the completed $7 billion project becoming large enough to be considered the city’s 78th neighborhood.