The city of Chicago will gain the rare distinction of having two high-profile stores next year when a street-level store opens at 108 North State Street, an enormous high-rise complex that is still under construction. The location is in the midst of the old downtown section of the city, about a mile from the existing North Michigan Avenue high-profile store. It consists of three tall office and residential towers, with ground-floor retail spaces. Architectural renderings surfaced in 2005 that showed an Apple store in the future complex, and construction on the buildings began in Nov. 2005. The retail spaces are scheduled to open in Spring 2009, and the Apple store could open at that time.Local resident Brian, who remarkably tipped off the future store way back in March, 2007 by finding some architectural renderings, reports that the local CBS affiliate has opened their new ground-floor, corner studio on September 22nd. The retail on the whole east side along State State, however, “still has some work to be done,” he says. The second and third floors have all their glass and siding in place, but the first floor build-out isn’t complete. “No interior studding, no windows, and even the sidewalk isn’t being worked on,” Brian says. He believes that, based on the floor plans, the final store will not be a high-profile location, but rather a very large, single level store.
Also read...
|
e-mail this story
The name is 108 NORTH State Street, not just 108 State Street. All streets in Chicago have a direction. 108 South State is just one block from 108 North State, so the ordinals are important.
Also, this is not downtown Chicago. Downtown Chicago is north of the Chicago River. 108 North State is in an area known as The Loop.
I respectfully disagree. The Loop is the center of downtown Chicago. So you’re allowed to say that a building in the Loop is in downtown Chicago if you want to. I was always interchanging the two descriptions when I told people where I work.
If you type “Downtown Chicago” in maps.google.com, the results are very clear. Admittedly, google only has a teeny tiny dev office there, but you can bet the locals would have fixed the problem if there was one.
(The Loop is the area roughly contained by the elevated tracks used by CTA trains that form a loop over Wells St, Van Buren St, Wabash Ave, and Lake St. The tracks make it pretty dark underneath them at street level; that part of Wabash Avenue hasn’t seen the sun in a hundred years…)
I agree with Mike. I’ve lived in the Chicago area since 1974. My rough definition of the amorphous “downtown” would be bounded by Congress Parkway/I-290 on the south, the north and south branches of the Chicago river on the west, and perhaps up to, say, Oak Street on the north. I’m probably being a bit more inclusive than most, but that area for me feels like “downtown.”
How was this confirmed? Did somebody intercept lease contracts in the building?
Job openings appeared at Apple. To add my $.02 to this debate, the Loop is most definitely downtown. The west side has the whole financial center of Chicago, the east side has all the government buildings and before the days of North Michigan Avenue, State Street was THE retail destination with Marshall Field’s, Carson Piere Scott, and Sears, not to mention Wiebolt’s etc. I live in the south loop so my say isn’t just ramblings about something I know nothing of.
-Brian
Reaperducer — Thanks for the correction on the development name. I’ve made the change. As for “Loop” vs. “downtown,” I was trying to write more generally, although I recognize that each city has its own terminology for what it considers to be city center (or city centre).
Cool. At that point in time the brand new Washington red-line stop should HOPEFULLY be done, making the store probably 50 feet away from a CTA ‘L’ entrance. Right now it is about a block and a half away from the Lake stop.
Actually, where it is situated it is within 2 blocks of every single one of the CTA lines (except the Skokie Swift Yellow line, which does not run downtown, and the regular-hour Purple line, which runs to the loop express from Evanston only during peak rush-hour times)
Oh and The Loop is, and has always been, considered ‘Downtown.’ N. Michigan Avenue around Michigan and Chicago (where the Apple Store is now) is considered the Gold Coast. The current Apple Store is situated it is on the edges of what most people would consider ‘downtown.’
Now there is a big push to make South Loop as nice if not nicer than the gold coast areas. As it stands right now the ‘Loop’ is on the middle to southern end of the ‘downtown’ area, even though it is considered by most people to represent ‘downtown’ Chicago.
