Start 15: 111 S. Wacker Drive
Cost: $130 million

Accounting firm Deloitte & Touche will have a new address next year when it moves into the 111 S. Wacker Drive building at Monroe Street in Chicago's Loop.

The two-level lobby of the 52-story building will feature a high atrium with a spiraling one-way cable wall storefront, said Jim Dushek, senior vice president and director of field operations in Chicago for Bovis Lend Lease, the general contractor. Structural steel supports the building, and the core is formed with concrete.

The remainder of the 1,470,000 sq. ft. building will be clad in a unitized curtain wall system. Floors three through nine will be parking, and the remainder will be office space.

Preconstruction on the building, developed by Chicago-based The John Buck Co., consumed much of 2001 and 2002. Construction began in February 2003.

"We're anticipating the completion of the base building in the first quarter of 2005," Dushek added.

The building is notable for several qualities.

First, Bovis was able to use the existing basement foundation walls and many of the existing caissons from the previous structure on the site, the USG Building, which dated to the 1960s and was torn down more than 12 years ago.

To permit use of these existing systems, Bovis installed a 100-sq.-ft., 10-ft.-thick monolithically poured mat.

"This enabled us to reduce the number of new caissons and, obviously, the cost of the foundation system," he added.

Has Cable Wall

The one-way cable wall system is also distinctive.

"This is a spiral and the cables go vertically, so we have some fairly heavy stresses," Dushek said. "In curtain wall, you'll have a mullion or some type of backup structure. In this case, the structural support system is a cable that is put in tension. That will replace an aluminum or steel mullion system and increases the viewing dimension into and out of the lobby, making it more open and spacious."

Also worth noting was the retention system. The contractor bermed the existing foundation walls with a high density CA 6 and rubble debris mix and put in a soldier pile and lagging system around the foundation mat.

"That just stabilized the earth and allowed us to use the berming system and reduce the cost of a retention system," he said. "We had to excavate out portions of the existing caissons and underground foundation system in that mat zone."

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