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House Tour!!!!!

Real estate is effed up.

certainly dramatic, but without an actual floor plan, can't tell whether the units are hot or not.

picking up on p(2)'s comment -- the prices seem comparable to new york -- which would be a bit high for chicago.

One has to wonder where the value is in something like that.

Definitely want a floor plan... those curved walls would typically cut into your usable space, making your 534 sf studio live like 450 sf or so.

Those curved walls have to leak like crazy... thank you but no. Calatrava is a great artist but not a great architect

I look forward to taking pictures of it. That's about it. Though I've also been curious about layout.

I think someone in the marketing department drank a bit too much of the Kool Aid. The worldwide financial markets are tanking and the real estate bubble has popped. There's no way they're going to fetch Manhattan-style prices in flyover country. Heck, it's starting to get difficult trying to fetch Manhattan-style prices in Manhattan!

"There's no way they're going to fetch Manhattan-style prices in flyover country." -hejiranyc

"Flyover country or flyover states is a somewhat derogatory Americanism popular among entertainers, businessmen, and others concerned with doing business on the coasts." -wikipedia

It's not Pekin hejiranyc, there are plenty of people in Chicago willing to pay overinflated prices for real estate. And food and automobiles and clothing and services, etc., no matter how bad the "market" may seem and even if Chicago doesn't happen to be a stop on your business route.

If it doesn't fetch a Manhattan-style price, what do you predict it will sell for?

world financial markets tanking? no more headline news for you! pick up the economist. or take a tour of world financial markets. they are booming. and the dollar is at record lows. $1m in today's dollar is play money, and architects of calatrava's recognition can easily command that.

I love the design of the Spire but the unfortunately, the cost per square foot is 3-4 times what I could afford.

I was at a holiday party last month and ended up talking to the woman who is heading up overall marketing (not condo sales) for the project for quite a while once she realized I already knew a fair amount about the project and was interested in the building. She mentioned that the units are very modular, ie. moving walls, kitchens that can completely hide away when not in use, etc. so that the units will live bigger than a traditional unit of comparable size.

Cool Calatrava designed winery in Spain:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/art_chel/1457824387/in/set-72157602199337624/

Johnp, what planet are you from? Trillions of dollars worth of wealth has already been wiped away from the worldwide economy. The U.S. is on the verge of recession, and if the U.S. sneezes, the world catches a cold. Always. Add to that the cracks already appearing in the UK and Euro banking systems (as evidenced by the recent printing of billions of euros). The fact is that with so many Americans defaulting on their homes, the world banks are left holding the bag after buying our garbage-based collateralized securities. Indeed, the dollar is tanking, and our "real property" is devaluating in real terms, but it's not like our salaries are increasing in nominal dollars in lockstep with the real deflating dollar. As such, the deflating dollar is a non-issue in terms of one's ability to afford to buy real estate.

That notwithstanding, this pricing is fundamentally out of whack with the Chicago market. Way out of whack. This is a little studio (even by NYC standards) for the price of a 2 BR luxury condo or even a single/multi-unit house in a prime area of Chicago. And unlike Manhattan, Chicago is not on an island and has infinite sprawl potential. Additionally, Chicago does not have the number of financial industry employees like NYC, which means that the pool of stupid rich people is much smaller. And ultimately, whether people are willing to admit it or not, Chicago is not the world-class destination that NYC has always been. I am sure there is some level of international interest, but nowhere near the level of NYC.

Have to pick up on gabiushka's comment, 'Those curved walls have to leak like crazy..."
When I toured Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater in Western Pennsylvania, our guide joked that "if the roof doesn't leak, it's not a Lloyd Wright."
Here in Toronto, Daniel Libeskind's angular addition to our patrician public museum is already leaking a few months after re-opening. It seems like the "great" architects have bigger things on their mind than merely keeping the rain out.
And maybe they're on the right track--we don't discuss and debate the mundane buildings in our midst, only the crazy, inspiring, envelope-pushing ones. Perhaps people really are getting what they're paying for in Chicago.

"Those who only read the New York papers could be forgiven for thinking that almost all of the nation’s rich live within a 10-block area on the Upper East Side..."

"But they’re wrong. According to a new study by TNS, the research company, Manhattan’s number of millionaire households doesn’t even rank among the top 10 counties in the country..."

"The TNS survey found that California has the highest number of millionaire counties. Ranking first was Los Angeles County, with 268,136 millionaire households and a whopping 3% of the nation’s total population of millionaires. Next up is Cook County, Illinois, which includes Chicago and has 171,118 millionaire households."

"...New York County (i.e. Manhattan) has about 61,000 millionaire households, ranking it somewhere below 10th-ranked King County, Washington, with 68,390."
- Wall Street Journal, May 2, 2007, 1:45 pm
Where Do All the Millionaires Live?

hejiranyc - i happen to be from nyc and have lived in chicago -yet can have a conversation about chicago without referencing new york. that planet.
oh and i travel to the middle east and asia frequently for work in, yes, finance, where there is more fabulous wealth than there are words to describe. that planet.

Go ahead hejiranyc, call him a "douchebag"

Well, then JohnP, I guess the rich Arabs will buy this building in Chicago. Especially since Chicago is known for its wonderful weather.

Brilliant.

all of this makes me want to say booya.

"The TNS survey found that California has the highest number of millionaire counties. Ranking first was Los Angeles County, with 268,136 millionaire households and a whopping 3% of the nation’s total population of millionaires.

What's their survey based off of? Tax returns or some other measure? Because there are a lot of Manhattan properties owned by extremely wealthy people who do not actually claim Manhattan as their primary residence - including tens of thousands of foreigners.

Property values have also skyrocketed in Los Angeles over the past decade. If they're including property values in their "millionaire" calculations, there are plenty of middle class folks who now qualify just based on the appreciation of their homes (although that's probably not gonna last much longer).

Why do New Yorkers ALWAYS NEED to be first in everything? So what if Cali has more millionaires (which makes perfect sense to me. They have more and bigger millionaire neighborhoods and areas like Malibu, Beverly Hills, Orange County, etc. NYC isn't even big enough to contain all of those areas). But big deal, what does it mean to you? And so what if Chicago has a new residential building with mortgages competing with the likes of NYC. NYC doesn't boast a residential building as architecturally intricate as the Chicago Spire, does it? Must we be so trivial?

Other major cities around the world (including the U.S.) are passing NYC by with lightning speed when it comes to new, cutting-edge architecture.

Yes the housing market is rediculous in the U.S. It has been for at least a decade now. With all the hype surrounding the "buy to sell" trend, it was bound to happen. Which one of us didn't see it coming?