Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Donald Trump knows a thing or two about gambling and its pitfalls. He runs a casino empire that went bankrupt.Now "The Donald" is asking Chicagoans to take a huge gamble on one of their most prized possessions: their skyline. But his lawyer and his architects are refusing to release the latest drawings of his $750 million, 92-story hotel and condominium tower to the public, and Trump isn't overruling them.That leaves the public in the dark about what sort of imprint -- graceful or gawky--the flamboyant New York City developer and star of "The Apprentice" reality TV show will leave on one of the world's great skylines.The decision not to make the drawings public is a slap in the face to the citizenry: The skyline belongs to everyone, not just to moguls and mayors. Nothing else so superbly expresses Chicago's renowned ability to convert the prose of steel and concrete into soaring, built-for-the-ages poetry.Trump appeared ready last week to release renderings of the tower, which, after some arm-twisting from Mayor Richard Daley, now has an off-center spire that soars all the way to 1,360 feet, just 90 feet shorter than Sears Tower.But Trump's zoning attorney, Ted Novak, and his architects, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill of Chicago, refused to make good on the developer's promise, saying they would only reveal the drawings available after the mayor gave them a final sign-off.Which shows you how the politics of urban planning really works in Chicago these days. It's Daley's way or no way.For all we know, the tower's chief architect, Skidmore's Adrian Smith, has crafted a marvelous top, something as winning as the tapering, symmetrical spire that culminates his postmodern NBC Tower at 454 N. Columbus Drive.Yet only a fool would take such design changes on faith. What if things don't turn out as sweetly as Trump and Smith are promising? You can't hide the city's second tallest building under a rug.Trump was in full P.T. Barnum mode last week, going on in a telephone interview about how the latest version of the spire is "so beautiful."Lest we forget, though, he was mouthing the same hype back in October when he declared his desire to ditch an earlier spire because it was, he said, ugly and a financial drag (no one wanted to buy antenna space on it).Then "Da Mayor" told "The Donald" that he wanted the spire back. And, as the Tribune's tabloid RedEye edition so marvelously put it, Donald ducked.In the abstract, at least, Daley's right.Put your finger over the spire that appears in Smith's May 2004 drawing, and the tower looks sadly incomplete -- a concerto without a finale, a mountain lacking a saw-toothed peak that would etch a spectacular silhouette against the sky.But it's the details that matter.Design changesSmith said last week that he had altered the 2004 version of the skyscraper, eliminating the curvy, Buck Rogers sunshades out of which the spire popped like a giant toothpick. A three-story glass element atop the tower's roof should make a better visual transition between the roof and the tapering steel spire.It sounds good.Yet seeing is believing.And we can't see.There is an insidious circular logic to Novak's argument that the drawings can't be released to the public until Daley sees them. That leaves the public to sit on its hands until the deal is done and it's too late to alter a Trump-Daley fait accompli.Yes, there have been public hearings on Trump's tower -- the Chicago Plan Commission approved the design last spring -- but the developer and his architects are talking about architectural features that will be visible for miles around, not mere tweaks to the lobby chandeliers.And the spire, it turns out, is only the most visible part of the high-stakes, high-rise gamble Trump is about to make.I've written before about the merits of Smith's design: setbacks that relate the tower to the profiles of nearby landmarks such as the Wrigley and IBM Buildings, nautical curves that evoke the prowlike edges of the Wrigley, a refined exterior wall of silvery glass that will catch the sky in a way the dark masses of Sears and the John Hancock Center don't, plus a riverfront plaza that should make the tower an attractive street-level presence.None of that has changed, nor has the design's underlying appeal: It strives to stand out even as it blends in.Still, as the demolition of the Chicago Sun-Times Building at 401 N. Wabash Ave. opens an enormous crater where the newspaper building used to be, it's hard not be struck by the vast size of the skyscraper's site and by the prospect that everything about Trump's tower will be modest except its bulk.You worry that it will come off as tasteful gigantism but gigantism nonetheless -- Shaquille O'Neill wearing Brooks Brothers instead of gold chains. The Wrigley could look like a pygmy.Hancock was shockingThe obvious counter-example is the 100-story, X-braced Hancock, which shocked many Chicagoans in the late 1960s as it soared above the Art Deco Palmolive Building and the elegant residential towers of East Lake Shore Drive. Now "Big John" is a beloved urban icon, about to appear on a U.S. postage stamp, and we take for granted, even celebrate, its jagged rupture of the North Michigan Avenue skyline. And the Palmolive still shines.The promise of Smith's design is that, along with Marina City, the IBM Building and the Wrigley, it will create a stunning lineup of towers along the river -- strong ideas strongly articulated, a series of diverse, sometimes-clashing forms that express Chicago's extraordinary vitality and never-ending capacity to reinvent itself.The risk is the great leap in height and the building's broadsided girth, which threaten to make it an exercise in scale-shattering megalomania.Odds are, given Smith's talent and commitment to design excellence, that Trump's gamble will pay off.But it's no sure bet.Now, before Daley signs off and construction begins, it's high time for "The Donald," his lawyer and his architects to let the public, and not just the mayor, see precisely what his intentions are for Chicago's skyline.

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