The structure would be called the Fordham Spire and is proposed to be built at North Water Street and Lake Shore Drive, near where the Chicago River meets Lake Michigan. It would be 115 stories, topping out at 1,458 feet to its roof. A spire on top would reach about 2,000 feet, making the building the country's tallest.
The Sears Tower, at 1,729 feet, is now the tallest when antennas are included. The Burj Tower in Dubai, under construction, is said to be planned at 2,300 feet, which would make it the world's tallest.
Developers in Chicago have tried in recent years to erect another large skyscraper to add to the Sears Tower, John Hancock Center and Aon Center, 3 of the 15 tallest buildings in the world. A soft commercial real estate market doomed those efforts. But Carley, a local developer of expensive residential properties, said the Fordham Spire — named after his development firm, the Fordham Company — would be a mixed-use tower with 200 to 250 condominiums atop a 20-story hotel. He said that its unique design, which resembles a drill bit, a blade of grass or a tall, twisting tree, depending on whom you ask, would attract high-end buyers eager to live in a Calatrava structure.
Both developer and architect said they were mindful of security concerns in designing the tower. Calatrava, in an interview, said he never set out to design the tallest building but instead was drawn to the project by the chance to do something special for the "heroic Chicago skyline."
Calatrava, an engineer by training who has in recent years moved from designing bridges and airports to tall buildings in New York and Malmo, Sweden, said the Chicago structure would be concrete and have two sets of emergency stairways.
In New York, where Calatrava is the architect of the new transportation hub being built at the former World Trade Center site, the designers of the Freedom Tower acceded to security concerns by the New York Police Department and redesigned the structure this spring, adding a 200-foot reinforced base that will be virtually windowless. The Freedom Tower, if built to its current designed height, would be 1,362 feet to its roof, and 1,776 feet to the top of its antenna.
Calatrava said he was not concerned the Chicago tower could be seen as a terrorist target. It will be residential, not commercial, he said, and have a slender profile that would be less attractive to potential attackers.
Carley said he was preparing for a tough fight in Chicago to get his tower approved but did not expect its height to be a chief concern — even though he currently has approval only to build two structures of 300 feet and 500 feet. Donald J. Trump had plans for a 150-story building in Chicago but cut it back to 90 stories shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Carley dismissed Trump's decision as a reaction to the soft commercial market, but Trump said the reason was security.
But so far, Chicago politicians are bubbling over the tower's design, and Carley and his sales team say that movie stars and at least one former chief executive of a Fortune 500 company are calling to inquire about buying units.
Living in the Calatrava tower would not come cheap, by Chicago standards. Carley said he expected one-bedroom units to sell initially for at least $600,000, with full-floor units of some 7,200-square-feet topping out at $5 million.
The twisting design, which was recently tested in a wind tunnel in Canada, would disperse Chicago's gusting winds, Carley said. And Calatrava designed the interior so that posts and columns would be toward the structure's center, to allow balconies on some floors and maximize the floor-to-ceiling views.
