Towering Ambition

The Chicago Spire aims to be the tallest skyscraper in North America. But will it get built? The twisting tale so far

By Jay Pridmore

(page 4 of 6)

Pretty pictures: Watercolor “explorations,” by the architect himself, served as irresistible marketing material for the skyscraper-in-progress.

It's hard to imagine what Kelleher had to gain by bullshitting anyone at this point, but stormy relations with the press continued. One of Kelleher's spokespersons chalked it up to culture clash. More to the point, Chicagoans, from curators to journalists to cabdrivers, claim architectural criticism as a constitutional right. And Kelleher didn't want meddlers and said so. "We're just getting on with it," he said at the time, as quoted by Lynn Becker, a well-regarded Chicago architecture blogger. "We're not really being led by media or journalists."

Those who know Kelleher say he can be charming. But his public reticence looked very much like stonewalling. He gave some interviews but responded to direct questions with platitudes. Finally he stopped answering interview requests—including mine, which went on for six months. "It's his land, it's his money, and he can do what he wants" was how one of his publicists explained his silence.

But Kelleher's aloofness wasn't the only thing that mystified. So too did his financing, or lack of it. Developers tend to be numbers-driven maniacs. They calculate costs to the last dollar. Banks typically require a condo developer to sell at least 50 percent of unbuilt units for any project, big or small, before they'll even consider a construction loan. Sometimes they ask for more if the project is extralarge: Financiers of the Trump Tower, for example, reportedly required 65 percent presold for a $780 million loan. Yet Shelbourne, which may need $1.2 billion in financing toward total costs of $2 billion, didn't even start selling until several months after ground was broken. It was blithely explained that Kelleher had enough equity in hand to start.

"It's an extremely risky way of approaching a project like this," said Dan McLean, a Chicago-based developer (who has condo developments near the Spire and could be construed as a competitor). McLean is not alone in this view. The basic numbers show that the project needs to sell at about $1,500 per square foot of living space to meet the industry's pro forma profit expectations. Other luxury projects in Chicago are getting $1,000 at most. Donald Trump asserted that Kelleher was committing "financial suicide." Others, more disinterested than Trump, do not disagree. And if the economics of the venture was tenuous last August, it's even tougher now. "Interest rates may be low, but banks just aren't lending money right now," McLean said.

Kelleher has seemed wholly indifferent to these outside judgments, or at least unwilling to discuss them publicly. When he finally spoke to me by telephone from Dublin, he was friendly if not entirely forthcoming. He acknowledged the unfortunate timing of a looming economic recession but insisted that it would not kill the deal. "In times like this people always revert to quality," he told me. "It is an incredible building. The standard and quality of design are second to none." Moreover, Kelleher expects the current credit crunch to resolve by the end of 2008. "The United States is a very resilient economy," he said. "Very robust."

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Photograph: Chicago Tribune/Artwork courtesy of Santiago Calatrava