PRESS
Chicago Tribune: October 14, 2005
(Copyright 2005 by the Chicago Tribune)
ARCHITECTURE
By Blair Kamin

Whether or not Mayor Richard M. Daley ultimately decides to move there, the Heritage at Millennium Park should command Chicago's attention.

Rising directly across Michigan Avenue from its namesake park, the 59-story, nearly 631-foot condo tower is taller than the old Prudential Building, which used to be the city's tallest skyscraper. It also happens to be one of the tallest residential buildings next to the Loop, offering the latest sign, besides Donald Trump's supertall riverfront hotel-condo tower, that skyscrapers now are as likely to be places where people live as where they work.

The impact of these behemoths, of course, should be measured by something other than a yardstick. What kind of shape do they etch on Chicago's vaunted skyline? How will they greet pedestrians who experience them close-up?

Flaunting a double-curved facade that ripples through the sky like a flag waving in the breeze, the Heritage answers these questions in a way that makes it a success, though hardly an unqualified one. While admirable on many levels, from its energetic but civilized skyline presence to the richly textured face it shows the street, it lacks the black-tie elegance demanded by its showplace site.

Developed by Mesa Development LLC and designed by John Lahey and Gary Klomp-maker of the Chicago firm of Solomon, Cordwell Buenz & Associates, the Heritage can be found at 130 N. Garland Ct., a single-block street between Michigan and Wabash Avenues. In 2004, the building took on added prominence when the Tribune revealed that Daley and his wife, Maggie, would move to the tower from their town- house in the South Loop's Central Station residential complex. Daley did not dispute the report at the time. But now, the move seems uncertain. Connie Dickinson, a Mesa spokeswoman, declined to discuss whether Daley will move to the building, saying that the Heritage's owners never publicly discuss condo buyers. City Hall sources said they were unsure of Daley's intent.

What is clear, at this point, is the Heritage's visual prominence, especially as it soars over the neighboring Chicago Cultural Center, the Beaux-Arts edifice at Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street.

The tower's base, which includes six parking levels and ground- level retail space, is more than 100 feet tall, about as high as the cultural center. The base is clad in precast concrete and a limestone that echoes the cultural center. Above it, the tower ascends in two parts, each with walls of painted exposed concrete.

Soars to summit

The southern side rises 27 stories, in keeping with the height of the clifflike wall of historic skyscrapers along Michigan Avenue and the neighboring Garland Building along Wabash Avenue. The interlocking northern side soars to the building's summit, stretching the Heritage above the ostentatious, diamond-topped skyscraper at 150 N. Michigan Ave. and approximating the scale of the big modern towers, including the Aon Center, along upper Randolph Drive.

A tower of this height easily could have dominated its surroundings, turning the cultural center into the equivalent of a footrest. Instead the Heritage enhances its environs, largely because it is a collection of clearly articulated parts, not a hulking monolith, like the exposed concrete residential towers that have blighted River North.

The tower's primary urban design strength is that it forms a hinge, a visual transition between the two scales (and two eras) of skyscrapers along Michigan and Randolph. The abstracted rows of columns atop its two sides evoke the colonnades of the cultural center and the old People's Gas Co. building at 122 S. Michigan Ave. Yet the tower's height and simplified forms relate well to the modern towers along Randolph.

At the same time, the Heritage excels at ground lev

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