How One of Chicago’s Most Iconic Office Towers Became Luxury Condos

Office-to-residential conversions are gaining traction following the pandemic and its subsequent reduced appetite for office space. One such project in downtown Chicago got started well before that, though.

After years of renovation, national design firm Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB) recently completed the conversion of Tribune Tower, a landmarked neo-Gothic tower on the riverfront end of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, to luxury condominiums.

Built in 1925 and formerly the home of the Chicago Tribune newspaper and WGN, Tribune Tower is a jewel of 20th-century architecture that serves as one of Chicago’s most iconic buildings. Developers CIM Group and Golub & Co. acquired the 35-story tower in 2016 before announcing plans for a residential conversion two years later.

“From the standpoint of being an architect in Chicago, it doesn’t get more special than this,” said Steven Hubbard, an associate principal at SCB who led the conversion’s design.

The project took the better part of a decade, though, and came with all the challenges imaginable for such an endeavor. Here’s how SCB gave new life to Tribune Tower as Chicago and other cities across the country look to revitalize their downtowns:

With its crown surrounded by ornate flying buttresses, Tribune Tower resembles a cathedral for journalism. Its stone lobby even has a “Hall of Inscriptions” with quotes from Founding Fathers and philosophers praising freedom of the press.

But by the time the Tribune vacated the tower in 2018, the building was less than divine, with departing journalists reminiscing more about the newsroom’s resident cockroaches than its historic charms.

“It was rough, to put it mildly,” Hubbard said. “Every place that the Tribune [newspaper] occupied was in pretty rough shape.”

And aside from the landmarked 1925 limestone tower, neighboring Tribune buildings on the development site lacked historic protective status and could have been demolished. But the development team including SCB opted to mostly preserve the entire site, which sits in a prized location on Michigan Avenue near the Chicago River.

“The program that the client ultimately decided on was exclusively luxury residential,” described Hubbard, because it could be achieved without demolishing the contributing buildings. “By preserving the facades of the contributing buildings so, the entire composition of the Tribune Tower could continue as it is understood and appreciated by the community,” Hubbard said.

Among other things, the team preserved the facades of the tower, made with Indiana limestone and embedded with artifacts collected by Tribune reporters from around the world. The tower’s lobby is also intact and remains open to the public.

Tribune Tower is a one-of-a-kind building, and you can almost say the same for its new condominiums: There are 56 different floor plans for its 162 units.

“You would not, with a new building, start out and set that as your goal,” Hubbard said, laughing. “That’s not something you strive to do, but it was imperative to take advantage of what the building offered.”

Such is the reality when working within a landmarked building. SCB had to convert a variety of floor plates ranging from 65,000 square feet at the very bottom to 1,800 square feet at the top of the tower.

SCB said it added ‘historically sensitive enhancements” to the property’s lower-rise, unprotected Radio and TV buildings (built respectively in 1935 and 1950 for WGN) to support new retail, as well as a new entry and drop-off for residents. The team carved out unusable office floor space in the middle of the TV Building to create four new floor plates that were suitable for residential use. They also added four additional floors to the northeast side of the TV building, providing a modern, glass complement to the existing limestone. This all frames a new interior private courtyard surrounded by units with outdoor terraces.

Hubbard said, surprisingly, the project’s biggest challenge may have been planting the courtyard in the middle of what were previously huge office floor plates.

“Structurally, as we began to carve out the center of it, we had to go back and reinforce almost all the beam and column connections in the low-rise portions so that they could continue to function and be structurally independent,” he said.

But the effort was worth it. The team also added much-needed green space to Pioneer Court, a public plaza in front of the tower along Michigan Avenue.

“You can walk by the building and all the streets and say, ‘it looks better, but it looks the same,’” Hubbard said. “And we think that’s a good thing. Particularly when you look at it from the new courtyard side. That is all completely new, yet it looks like it was there all along.”

Residents began moving into the tower in 2021. Units currently listed for sale in the tower range from a 1,100-square-foot one-bedroom unit asking $839,000 to a four-bedroom unit asking $4.8 million. Fixtures include custom millwork and cabinetry, SubZero, Wolf and Miele appliances, marble bathrooms and wide-plank white oak wood floors. CIM Group and Golub & Co. paid $240 million for Tribune Tower in 2016 and secured $328 million in construction financing in 2018.

The building is full of luxury amenities totaling 55,000 square feet, highlighted by a lounge and wraparound terrace at the tower’s crown, offering residents spectacular city views. Behind the Chicago Tribune sign on the printing press’s seventh floor are an indoor 75-foot lap pool and another terrace with indoor-outdoor kitchens, an herb garden and firepits. The second floor has a fitness center with saunas and a golf simulator. The third floor has a private bar, lounge areas, game rooms and meeting areas.

“Within the limitations of working with the building, there were just certain portions of it that couldn’t be converted to residential,” Hubbard said.

The Tribune Tower project offers a blueprint for vacant landmarked buildings as developers and public officials eye more office-to-residential conversions, which are often as complicated as they are expensive.

In Chicago, outgoing mayor Lori Lightfoot rolled out a plan to subsidize the conversion of underused office towers on LaSalle Street — home to the Chicago Board of Trade, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and other financial institutions — to apartments, including units with affordable, below-market rents. Finalists were expected to be announced as soon as this month. Similar initiatives are underway in cities including New York, Los Angeles and Washington.

These conversions are often easier said than done, however. First, they require an acquisition cost that’s low enough to make the conversion profitable. Big floor plates in office buildings don’t allow for the level of natural light suitable for residential, never mind individual plumbing or electrical needs. Finally, many downtowns hollowed out during the pandemic, leaving a dearth of retail such as grocery stores and restaurants that home hunters seek.

But Chicago may also be better equipped to handle office-to-residential conversions than other cities. Downtown’s Streeterville neighborhood, which includes Tribune Tower, has been heavily residential since the early 20th century. Chicago’s Loop, south of the Chicago River, has attracted a surge of new high-rise buildings and residents, especially since the opening of Millennium Park in 2004. Chicago’s downtown enjoys the fastest-growing residential population among all the city’s neighborhoods, even through the pandemic.

There is still work to be done at the Tribune Tower site. Plans are approved for a new 1,400-foot-tall hotel and residential tower designed by Adrian Smith (the architect behind Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, among other projects) on a CIM/Golub-owned site to the east of Tribune Tower.

But until that’s built, Hubbard hopes that the public appreciates the work his team did to preserve the integrity of one of Chicago’s most iconic buildings.

“If it had been a different developer, who knows what would’ve happened there? We were able to maintain the architectural character and enhance the way it addresses its public spaces. That, for me, has been the most rewarding thing about this experience,” he said.