First Donald Trump wanted to do away with a decorative spire atop his hotel and condominium tower on the Chicago River. Then Mayor Daley asked him to put it back on the building’s plans.
Now The Donald, seemingly unable to resist associating his name with the word “tallest,” is setting his sights on an even taller spire, one that could make his Chicago tower the tallest skyscraper in North America.
On Wednesday, City Hall said it was thinking big too.
Connie Buscemi, a spokeswoman for the city’s planning department, confirmed that Trump and the city are in discussions about a taller tower.
“We have not seen the proposal yet, but if this indeed is what they are planning to submit, we certainly are amenable to it,” Buscemi said.
The proposed changes to the design come as demolition crews knock down the final pieces of the former Chicago Sun-Times building on the site.
The idea marks the latest major turnaround in the tower’s height and shape. Less than two weeks ago, Trump’s architects said the building with the spire would be no taller than 1,360 feet.
Now that height could grow, creeping back toward Trump’s first plan to build the world’s tallest building in Chicago. That original 2,000-foot tower design was dramatically scaled back to a blocky 78-story high-rise after the Sept. 11 attacks.
But Trump is now less concerned that a tall building would be a target and is aiming for the sky again. For Daley, it would be a trophy as well, a building taller than the 1,450-foot Sears Tower.
Officials involved in the project, speaking on condition of anonymity, said new plans would extend a spire at least 326 feet above the building, outreaching the Sears Tower, currently the nation’s tallest.
Communications antennas do not count in a building’s overall height, according to the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the international arbiter of height rules. The council counts decorative spires as part of a building’s height, however.
Another version for the top of the Trump tower would add at least another 33 feet above that, bringing the top of the spire to at least 1,484 feet, a foot taller than the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, currently the second-tallest in the world.
The building’s neighbors have concerns, however. Ald. Burton Natarus (42nd), who represents the ward where the new skyscraper will be built, said he knows nothing about the proposed increase in height and expressed frustration with the way Trump has handled the project.
“Trump goes ahead and does anything he wants,” the alderman said.
If he decides he doesn’t like the final plan, Natarus said he has options.
“Even though it might end up in litigation, I can file an ordinance repealing the whole thing,” he said, stopping short of saying he would. “I don’t know if it will pass, but I can file an ordinance.”
Even if Trump decides to top the Sears Tower and the city grants its approval, his Chicago skyscraper might not be the nation’s tallest for long.
The Freedom Tower at Ground Zero in New York, designed with the symbolic height of 1,776 feet to evoke the year the Declaration of Independence was signed, is scheduled to be completed in 2009, said Elizabeth Kubany, a spokeswoman for the New York City office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which designed the project. Trump’s tower, designed by Skidmore’s Chicago office, is expected to be finished in 2007.
