CHICAGO — Two artists, Tony Fitzpatrick and Danny Torres, were standing in the lobby of a new building on LaSalle Street, across from a building that was once Gino’s East, now shuttered, and before that was Michael Jordan’s restaurant and long before that was a place named Ireland’s.
The city is an organic thing, ever transforming, and this new building, at 448 N. LaSalle St., is a fine and encouraging example of the new. Twelve stories of glass and steel and striking from the outside, it recalls the work of the great architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and a sign near its entrance announces “The Office of Tomorrow is Coming Here.”
Inside, talking with the two artists was a man named Jay Javers and he said to me, “We wanted a real Chicago building.” He and his son Charlie are principals in the CA Ventures and Midwest Property Group Ltd., which developed and built the structure with the Lamar Johnson Collaborative architectural company.
