Archinect - News

Chicago Mayor considers scaling back sign limits on office towers to lure Salesforce

2018-09-25T13:21:00-04:00

The 20-foot-tall letters spelling “T-R-U-M-P” on the city’s second-tallest building prompted Chicago aldermen four years ago to regulate the installation of large signs on office buildings. Now, Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to tweak that ordinance to help secure a huge expansion by software firm Salesforce in a new riverfront skyscraper. The city’s Department of Planning and Development [...] unveiled a plan that would allow larger signs on office towers, depending on how high signs are placed.

Who could forget the epic 2014 spat between Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin, backed by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and New York-based real estate developer Donald Trump over the controversial "TRUMP" letters on his hotel and condo tower in the city (Kamin's tempestuous relationship with Trump goes even further back)?

Blair Kamin's tempestuous relationship with Donald Trump

2016-10-07T17:38:00-04:00

Over the years, Trump has courted me, comforted me, criticized me and sent me a handful of sometimes-fawning letters and notes. I saved the correspondence. Wouldn't you? [...] And the missives are telling. Combined with other things he's said and written, they show that Candidate Trump isn't all that different from Developer Trump. He remains a master media manipulator who can be charming, mercurial and vengeful. Only now he wants to be the most powerful man on earth.

In this relatively personal piece for the Tribune, architecture critic Blair Kamin recounts his tumultuous personal and professional relationship with Trump over 10+ years, talking (as developers and architecture critics do) about buildings.

Kamin explains that there were times when Trump was supportive (regarding a health issue), and praising of his criticism. But whenever the criticism didn't go Trump's way, he bucked at Kamin. Their back-and-forth frothed to a head in 2009, over Kamin's criticism of Trump's condo and hotel tower in Chicago—before it was emblazoned with the "TRUMP" sign:

"It's a good building," I said, praising the tower's glistening exterior but faulting its uninspired spire and riverfront bulk.

There was a pause.

"Good?" Trump said, sounding shocked. He had "sucked up" to me for all these years, he said, "and all I get is good?"

When Kamin did criticize the TRUMP signage in 2014, Trump called Kamin "dopey" and "a lightweight". Trump lumps Goldberger and Kamin to...

Old Guy Fight! Tribune’s Blair Kamin vs. Donald Trump

2014-11-20T17:14:00-05:00

Watching two grown men in a social media hissy fit over a building sign is actually a lot more amusing than one might think. In this corner, Donald Trump, rich guy, who, in the view of one esteemed newspaper critic, has defiled our fine city by slapping his name on the side of his silvery, shiny building. In the other corner, Blair Kamin, decorated architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune and defender of building aesthetics.

Chicago Mayor blasts Trump sign as 'tasteless'

2014-06-13T12:24:00-04:00

On Thursday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel belatedly jumped into the fray after a public campaign against the sign on Chicago's second-tallest building spearheaded by the Chicago Tribune’s Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Blair Kamin. “Mayor Emanuel believes this is an architecturally tasteful building scarred by an architecturally tasteless sign,” Kelley Quinn, the mayor’s newly-appointed communications director, said in an emailed statement.

Trump responds in his typical classy style...

Before I bought the site, the Sun Times had the biggest, ugliest sign Chicago has ever seen. Mine is magnificent and popular.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2014