Shoreham Apartment
Half of Building Completed for May Rentals

by Elaine Schmidt

Four months needed to be shaved from the original construction schedule on the $113 million Shoreham apartment tower in Chicago so that at least part of it would be ready for leasing in May.

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Daniel Obuchina, project manager for general contractor Walsh Construction Co. of Chicago, said the project's original schedule had Walsh turning over the first completed space in August. The project is west of Lake Shore Drive, south of Wacker Drive and north of Randolph Street.

But a long-standing Chicago tradition of leasing residential spaces on May 1 threw a wrench into the project schedule.

"Historically in Chicago, apartment leases tend to be up on May 1 or Oct. 1," said Jim Loewenberg, president of Loewenberg and Associates, the project's designer and the property's manager. "It's not like it was 30 or 40 years ago, but it's still a major factor in the rental market."

Complicating matters, 17 days were lost to winter weather.

But Walsh accelerated the schedule and was able to turn over residential floors three through 15 floors of the 47-story building by April 28.

Obuchina said the quicker pace required carefully choreographed concrete pours.

"On the lower floors we poured one floor every four days," he added. "On the upper floors, where the floors are 10,000 sq. ft., we were able to cast one every three days." Design features include floor-to-ceiling widows, aluminum curtain wall and floor plates of 15,000 sq. ft. through the 16th floor, narrowing to 10,000 sq. ft. on floors 17 through 47.

Accelerating the concrete pours was only part of the scheduling solution, and the trades had to keep a fast pace as well.

"Close coordination of the subs also helped," Obuchina said. Subs were given one week to complete the first floor, getting the learning curve out of the way. After that they had to turn over two floors per week.

"We had to demand some rather large crews from the subs to do two floors each week," he added. "It required that everybody work at the same rhythm."
Walsh, too, had big crews onsite.

"We self-performed a lot of the work," Obuchina said. He estimated that during the pour phase of the project, when Walsh had its own carpenters, ironworkers and laborers on site, the payroll covered 150 to 200 people.

"If it was a pour day, we added 20 concrete finishers," he said.

Part of Lakeshore East

Construction started on the Shoreham on December 2003. It will be the second completed building part of the multibuilding Lakeshore East residential development.

The $2 billion Lakeshore East development west of Lake Shore Drive on the Chicago River will cover 28 acres. The project, which is being developed by Chicago-based Lakeshore East LLC, a joint venture of Magellan Development Group Ltd. of Near North Properties Inc., is slated to hold 5,000 residential units and could house more than 10,000 residents.

The Shoreham will house 548 rental units and 350 parking spaces in a garage and will present a distinctive, slim profile.

The building will feature a swimming pool on the 16th floor on a terrace.

Additional amenities include free high-speed Internet access, furnished overnight guest suites and 24- hour door staff and maintenance. There also is access to the Shore Club, which includes a fitness center, barbeque area and lounge, reading room, gaming tables and party suite.

Apartments range in price from $1,000 to $1,200 for a 500- to 700-sq.-ft. studio; $1,500 to $1,700 for a 750- to 850-sq.-ft. one-bedroom unit; and $2,000 to $2,300 for a 1,050- to 1,100-sq.-ft. two-bedroom unit. In mid-May, 30 apartments had been rented on floors three through 15.

High in the Sky

At the top of the building, an outrigger support system required some fancy ironwork.

"The core areas of the building are tied horizontally to the outboard columns via some huge transfer beams," Obuchina said. "At the top of the building, where most construction simplifies, we had this enormous amount of reinforcing steel laced in from east to west and north to south to give the building rigidity."

Ola Johansson, senior associate and project manager with Seattle-based structural engineer Magnusson Klememcic Associates, said, "The biggest engineering challenge was to make the lateral system work."

He said the goal was to minimize the structural walls to gain as much rentable architectural space as possible.

"We put a shear core in the middle of the building that encloses the elevators and such," Johansson added. "Then, at the top of the building, we connected the shear core with an outrigger system to the perimeter columns.

"The beauty of it is that it is at the top of the building where there is a lot of dead space anyway. We can fill the walls with anything up there and let them do double duty. They connect the outriggers and the core and enclose the mechanicals."

Obuchina said the walls in the mechanicals penthouse are about 4-ft. thick. He added that the building topped out just before Thanksgiving.

A Site with History

The site's history presented a set of surprises.

"In one of the initial surveys of the property, Michigan Avenue was on the edge of Lake Michigan," Obuchina said.

A decade ago the Shoreham site was a golf course, and a century ago the prime real estate wasn't real estate at all - it was part of the lakeshore.

After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the area was filled with charred detritus from the conflagration. Added later was canal and harbor-mouth dredgings when the site was part of the expansion of the area east of Michigan Avenue.

The old docks and boat slips of the harbor, which were buried under the fill, presented some concerns during early work.

"During the foundation phase of construction, the old wood pilings from the docks, and some of the old structures, did cause some problems," Obuchina said. "They were obstructions to the building's caissons and foundations."

Obuchina said that to stay on schedule, crews "bounced around," installing caissons in areas where there no obstructions, while other crews removed the old wood piers and sheds.

The site's history also reared its head when early testing reveal traces of thorium.

"Thorium is a radioactive element like radium," Loewenberg said. "Up until the 1920s it was used as a stiffening agent in the productions of mantels for gas lamps."

Thorium might have migrated to the site from a plant more than century ago across the river. Between landfill operations and the construction of locks to reverse the river's flow at the beginning of the 20th Century, some of that thorium made its way into the ground.

Loewenberg said the material could be left alone as long as it remained undisturbed in the ground, but disturbed soil was another matter.

"We had to be very careful in our construction of the Shoreham foundations," he said. "We had testing people on the site all the time to make sure that the material coming out of the ground was not contaminated."

He added that contaminated materials were carted to a dump near Moab, Utah.