As Lake Point Tower, once the world’s tallest all-residential high-rise, celebrates its 50th anniversary this weekend, it’s an apt time to reflect on its legacy. The 70-story condominium tower, which sits just west of Navy Pier at 505 N. Lake Shore Drive, is both hero and villain, though it is more the former than the latter. — Chicago Tribune

The buildings aren’t the work of celebrated modernist architects such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe or Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. They bear no resemblance to the towering glass and steel monuments to postwar rationalism that you see downtown. They house doctors’ offices and dry cleaners, furniture stores and accounting firms. Some are vacant, their prim hedges and topiary gone to seed. — chicagomag.com

Skyscraper owner Blackstone hopes Catalog, the centerpiece of the building's ongoing $668 million renovation, will set off a rush of foot traffic in the southwest corner of the Loop. [...]

Anchoring Catalog will be Willis Tower's first food hall, a 14,000-square-foot location run by London-based food hall operator Urbanspace, as well as dining options Shake Shack, Sweetgreen, Luke's Lobster and Taylor Gourmet. — Crain's Chicago Business

The oversized skyscraper models in the window, one of them 38 feet tall, are the undisputed stars of the show, but they’re not the only reason to visit the Chicago Architecture Center, the engaging new home of the organization previously known as the Chicago Architecture Foundation.

There is also the dramatically expanded Chicago Model, an expanse of mini skyscrapers and other buildings that offers a helicopterlike overview of the city’s sprawling downtown. — chicagotribune.com

Skyscrapers as tall as 70 stories are part of a developer’s ambitious plan to bring 23,000 jobs and 5,000 homes to the Chicago River on the city’s North Side.

Those are among new details that Chicago developer Sterling Bay unveiled Wednesday night during the long-anticipated first public meeting for its planned Lincoln Yards project, a more-than-$5 billion development planned for at least 70 acres along the river between Lincoln Park and Bucktown [...]. — Chicago Tribune

Daniel Burnham’s ghost and his much-quoted exhortation to “make no little plans” haunt the just-released, utterly underwhelming design for a vertical expansion of Chicago’s Union Station.

To put things in Burnham-speak, these plans are little — very little.

There’s nothing wrong with the idea of putting a 330-room hotel in the upper floors [...] The trouble is a planned apartment addition that would plunk a squat modernist box atop the existing structure’s neo-classical pedestal. — Chicago Tribune

In a new statement, Kapoor claimed that it was the “solidarity and support” of the public that encouraged him to take action against the NRA, and urged everyone “to stand up to the dark and aggressive forces in society that seek, out of fear and hatred, to lead us backward into a primitive, paranoid, and defensive worldview.” — artnet

Autonomous 16-passenger vehicles would zip back and forth at speeds exceeding 100 mph in tunnels between the Loop and O’Hare International Airport under a high-speed transit proposal being negotiated between Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s City Hall and billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk’s The Boring Co., city and company officials have confirmed.

Emanuel’s administration has selected Musk’s company from four competing bids to provide high-speed transportation between downtown and the airport. — Chicago Tribune

Despite the 90-day hold on demolition permits for buildings determined to be historic by the city, Miller says that some city council members have used aldermanic prerogative to fast-track the eventual destruction of significant structures. But more often than not, Miller says that communities and preservation advocates simply do not have enough time to line up a buyer or produce a plan for adaptive reuse when demolition threats surface. — Chicago Magazine

The long-awaited vision for the 2.2-acre site along the Chicago River and Lake Michigan, unveiled in the first community meeting for the project, is toned down a bit from the 2,000-foot-tall Spire plan that stirred emotions but never advanced beyond a 76-foot-deep foundation hole. The design, by One World Trade Center architect David Childs, includes a south tower rising 1,100 feet and an 850-foot north tower. — Chicago Tribune

A hardscrabble half-mile stretch along the Chicago River's South Branch would become a vibrant neighborhood of cutting-edge architecture, parks and a riverwalk in the plans a developer unveiled Thursday for the last big piece of empty land near downtown.

Developer Related Midwest plans a transformation of the vacant, relatively isolated 62-acre site into a vibrant neighborhood of homes, restaurants, cultural institutions and businesses... — chicagobusiness.com

The 16,000 people who work in and visit Willis Tower each day could soon be spending less time on their elevator rides in Chicago's tallest building.

A five-year project to upgrade the tower's 83 elevator shafts -- and replace 97 passenger cabs, as some shafts have two-level elevators -- will start in June, according to the building's owner, Blackstone Group's Equity Office, and elevator firm Otis. — Chicago Tribune