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The Chicago Spire debacle
What really happened with developer Garrett Kelleher and the Chicago Spire.
The builders of skyscrapers are by nature bold and brash, with their manhood on full display on a city skyline. The elegant Flatiron Building in New York symbolizes the hubris of its designer, Daniel Burnham, and his credo: “Make no little plans.” The sleek IBM Building in Chicago exudes the confidence of architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who had the impudence to declare, “God is in the details.” The various Trump Towers scattered across the world characterize the potency of Donald Trump, who has numerous progeny made of brick and mortar in addition to his five human offspring.
Garrett Kelleher wanted to be a part of the builders club. The Irish-born developer came to Chicago in 2006 with plans to construct a 150-story condominium high-rise on Lake Michigan that would be the tallest skyscraper in North America and also the tallest residential building in the world. His gleaming structure, called the Chicago Spire, would be a swirling glass and steel tower designed by the renowned Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. It would be the focal point of the Chicago skyline.
Kelleher, who had previously only built modest high-rises less than 20 stories in Europe, sized up the competition: The Trump International Hotel and Tower, under construction at the time, was going to be an impressive 96 stories. Nicknamed “Big John,” the John Hancock Center was huge at 100 stories. The Sears Tower (now Willis Tower), at 110 stories, was even bigger.
But Kelleher had dreams of building the biggest. “There was a certain sense of the phallus effect here,” says Alexander Lehnerer, an architect, urban designer and professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture. “The Spire would be bigger than the rest and kind of dominate the city’s skyline.”
Today, all Kelleher has to show for his dreams is a gaping, 76-foot-deep hole in the ground. The Spire construction site, where Lake Shore Drive meets the Chicago River in the Streeterville neighborhood, has been idle for more than two years, and is littered with garbage and abandoned trailers. The hole dug for the building’s foundation is surrounded by orange cyclone fencing and caution signs. Kelleher and his company, Dublin-based Shelbourne Development Group, are the subject of lawsuits and liens on the 2.2-acre site for unpaid bills, bank loans and property taxes totaling at least $100 million, and the chances the Spire will ever be built grow slimmer each day.
Instead of having the biggest edifice in town, Kelleher has the largest orifice. And the guy gloating the most is none other than Trump, who from the beginning scoffed at the Spire, especially when it stole the spotlight from his Trump Tower, which was being built just eight blocks west.
“I predicted [the Spire] wouldn’t be built, and I was right,” Trump says. “Only I had the vision and resources to get it done and now my building is the biggest to be built since Sears Tower.”
Part of Kelleher’s misfortune was beyond his control, Trump admits. “I had good timing. I got my financing before the market collapse,” he says, although he, too, is feeling the pain of a weak economy, with one-fourth of Trump Tower’s condominiums still unsold.
Trump also takes a dig at Kelleher’s judgment as a developer. “It’s an impractical building and the location is only so-so,” Trump says. “Who’d want to live there?”
What exactly Kelleher thinks about the remarks of Trump and other critics is difficult to ascertain; he’s ensconced back in Ireland and isn’t taking calls. His Chicago-based attorney, Thomas J. Murphy, isn’t talking either.
