The high-water marks showing where the last boom broke under the pressure of the Great Recession are still visible in cities all over the country. The Chicago Tribune recently checked on a particularly poignant example in Chicago.
Kim Janssen checks in on the hole in the ground that almost became the Chicago Spire skyscraper, and the second-tallest building in the world after the Burj Khalifa.
After the Great Recession forced Spire developer Garrett Kelleher to halt construction with only a 76-foot-deep hole that would have been the building's foundation to show, the property has since changed hands and not much else.
Janssen reports, however, that "[w]orkers last week started moving dirt to form a landscaped berm that will block the view of the 110-foot diameter hole from a row of 10 Streeterville row homes on the 400 block of East Water Street." The camouflage effort was followed by a communication from current owners the Related Midwest announcing, in effect, that there's nothing to see, or expect, at the Spire.
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City of Albany
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research