A mixed-use laboratory

A mixed-use laboratory
February 29, 1960

It is February 29, 1960. In the past five months, we’ve learned...

Marina City is now a $36 million project. In 2014 money, that is $288 million.

The $3 million spent on just the site was the largest single private land transaction in the history of Chicago.

The plan is now for 896 apartments, parking for 900 cars, and a marina for 700 boats.

Designed for middle-income families, rents will start at $115 per month.

Marina City did not invent mixed-use development but arguably it was the first to blend residential and commercial use on such a large scale.

The arrangement is popular today as it has been throughout most of human history. In 1916, zoning regulations in the United States started separating the two purposes, trying to keep people away from polluted industrial areas. The trend accelerated after World War II and started to slow in the early 1960s.

Marina City would celebrate mixed-use development with a motion picture theater, a ten-story office building, a boat marina and yacht club, skating rink, bowling alley, restaurants, a health clinic for union employees, and a sculpture garden.

The ceiling of the theater would be covered with plastic air-filled domes that would be raised or lowered from the projection booth to adjust acoustics. The theater’s service elevator will be big enough to carry a truck. High-speed elevators in the towers will travel at 700 feet per minute.

The apartment towers are now 60 stories tall and at 555 feet they will be the tallest apartment buildings in the world and the third tallest buildings in Chicago.

16 curved balconies will protrude from each of 40 residential floors, starting with the 21st floor. Every room on the perimeter of each of the floors will have its own balcony. The apartments will surround a 35-foot core that contains utilities and mechanical equipment.

It is thought at the time that ground would be broken in May and that the entire project would be done the following year.

(Right) East tower floor plate, floors 21-53.

Models with a model of Marina City (1960).

And then, there would be more Marina Cities.

“Once this project is a functioning unit here, we are planning to erect similar projects in other major cities,” says William L. McFetridge at the unveiling of a model (left) of Marina City on February 29.

On May 2, New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller appears to take McFetridge up on the offer, inviting him and his union to build a housing development in New York similar to the Chicago complex.

In June 1960, with groundbreaking actually five months away, more than 600 rental applications have been received for the 896 apartments. The ten-story office building on the north side of the property is 30 percent rented to businesses that will pay six dollars per square foot for anything from a single office to 18,000 square feet per floor.

Marina City will earn $1.5 million in rent from commercial tenants and about the same from apartments. But it will come at a cost.

Last updated 18-Jun-14

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