Water Tower Place
| Location | Chicago, Illinois, USA |
|---|---|
| Opening date | 1976 |
| Owner | General Growth Properties |
| Total retail floor area | 729,000 square feet (67,726.3 m2) |
| No. of floors | 8 |
Water Tower Place is a large urban, mixed-use development comprising a 758,000 sq ft (70,400 m2) shopping mall and 74 story skyscraper in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The mall is located at 835 North Michigan Avenue, along the Magnificent Mile. It is named after the nearby Chicago Water Tower, and is owned by General Growth Properties.
Originally planned in the late 1960s by the Mafco Company (the former shopping center development division of Marshall Field & Co.), the skyscraper was eventually built in 1975 by Urban Retail Properties, a company led by Philip Morris Klutznick and his son Thomas J. Klutznick. The project received a J.C. Nichols Prize from the Urban Land Institute in 1986. Modernist architect Edward D. Dart, of Loebl Schlossman Bennett and Dart, was the chief architect.
The tower section is a 78-story, 859-foot (262 m) reinforced concrete slab, faced with gray marble, and is the eighth tallest building in Chicago and the twenty-sixth tallest in the United States. When built, it was the tallest reinforced concrete building in the world. It contains an award-winning Ritz-Carlton hotel, luxury condominiums and office space, and sits atop a block-long base containing an atrium-style retail mall that fronts on the Magnificent Mile.
Water Tower Place's opening changed the economic dynamics of the Magnificent Mile by bringing middle-class shops to what had been a street dominated by luxury retailers, tony hotels, and expensive apartments. It shifted downtown Chicago's retail center of gravity north from State Street to North Michigan Avenue. Decades after its construction, its residences and hotel remain sought after addresses, and the mall is typically fully leased, drawing large enough crowds that some retailers operate outlets both inside the mall and outside it along Michigan Avenue.
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