The constriction of the Bank of America Tower at the heart of Chicago has been completed and the building opened to public use. The 56 stories building is the latest addition to the tallest commercial buildings in Chicago in the last 30 years.
The 1,770,000-sf tower was designed by Goettsch Partners and comes with a stepped center core that allows for a 45-foot lease span on each side. There are five-foot setbacks along the river, which help enhance interior space planning. The setbacks have been partitioned to create 14 corner offices. They are designed to form a distinctive pattern that accentuates the tower’s verticality and also prevents the poor box-like appearance, which is common with many office blocks.
There is a 45-foot high lobby enclosed in a glass wall that is supported by a cable with sculpted, folded-limestone cladding covering the elevator core. The low-iron glass wall is transparent enough to eliminate any differences between the exterior space of the streetscape and the interior space of the lobby.
Other features on the building include an Advanced Financial Center located on the lobby floor and which features videoconferencing capabilities, ATMs, and interactive banking technologies. It also has a two-story, 16,000-sf fitness center and also a Riverwalk café which is operated by Gibson’s Restaurant Group.
More than 2,600 Bank of America employees occupy 17 floors of the building together with 536,278 sf across the tower, which is also LEED Gold certified. Interior design and interior amenity spaces were done by Nelson Worldwide.
The project cost $775 million to put up and its owners are expected to pay more than $25 million annually in property taxes. The building blends several features of modern design including a mix of attractive public spaces, bold structural drama, and reflective-glass banality.
The tower is also strategically located near downtown’s train stations at a location that was previously occupied by a five-story building and the headquarters of General Growth Properties.
