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February 3, 2006
Learn on the 'Cob
Chicago Carless has everything you need to know about Marina City, a.k.a. "The Corncob Buildings," a.k.a. "Those Buildings on That Wilco Album That Too Many People Like Way Too Much."
Personally, I think that Marina City is a failure on the pedestrian level. From afar, they're pretty cool, as Mike from Carless says, a "modernist alternative to boxy Miesianism." But when you get closer, either from the other side of the State Street bridge or Kinzie Street, it's nothing but a giant parking garage. There is so much parking in that building, all unshielded from public view, that it often requires a few steps back to see that people actually live there.
Well, I suppose that's what it took to get a building built in the last half-century.
Posted by rj3 at February 3, 2006 1:06 PM
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Comments
Doesn't that apply to pretty much every major building in Chicago?
How 'bout the Smurfit Stone building?
The Prudential building?
Or others? I could google and try and find the names of others (that look better from far away and look pretty much like another corporate office building up close) but I can't be bothered.
Posted by: cookie connoisseur at February 4, 2006 1:58 PM
It's the parking thing that gets me more than anything else, combined with the fact that the streetscape around Marina City is a bit of a tangle and not very pedestrian-friendly.
Posted by: rj3 at February 4, 2006 5:37 PM
I agree, pedestrian-friendliness has never been MC's strong point, and only got worse when House of Blues and Smith and Wollensky went in, attracting way more automobile traffic than the one block can really handle. We go through battles with HOB and S&W about double-parking from their deliveries, tour buses, etc. all the time, and you take your life in your hands when you cross the entrance driveway to the plaza on State Street. The one bright spot is that, with the city's new Museum of Broadcasting Communications going in at Marina City at the SW corner of State and Kinzie, the State Street sidewalk should receive a great deal of improvements.
The funny thing about all those cars in the parking spirals is that they were put there because people in 1962 were thought to be afraid of the city and to want their cars to get around the city and for easy escape. Now, however, most of those cars you see on the ramps belong to office workers, HOB Patrons, and really only a few MC residents who keep them there mostly for the weekend, if that. (Well, and of course Kimmel's pimp fleet, but that's another story...)
Posted by: Mike Doyle at February 4, 2006 10:00 PM
I went to 10pin once (by car, long story), and I was very excited to try my hand at parking up there, but it was valet and I was quite dissapointed.
Posted by: rj3 at February 5, 2006 10:22 AM
