When you think of the data-center issue that’s roiling our nation’s politics right now, what comes to mind are hulking, low-rise structures in far-flung suburbs or rural areas.
But the hunger for more computing power appears insatiable. Only a matter of time, then, before owners of half-empty old office buildings in downtown Chicago looked to take advantage.
And here we are.
The owner of a landmark property a stone’s throw from Willis Tower proposes to convert nearly half the structure to a data center.
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The plan took an important step on Thursday with the approval of the Permit Review Committee of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks, as reported by Crain’s Chicago Business. That panel, we’re told, focused mainly on the lack of impact on the facade and external appearance of 300 W. Adams St., which will turn 100 years old next year.
The 12-story terra-cotta building, designed by Jens Jensen, a peer of Louis Sullivan and other giants of the age, was landmarked in 2009.
There will be more steps necessary before final approval; we think the city ought to put the brakes on this project.
The lead owner, Igor Gabal, bought 300 W. Adams in 2023 for just $4 million. The building is less than half occupied by office tenants, and some of the ground-floor retail spaces are vacant as well. Gabal argued before the committee that he had tried to gin up interest from investors in residential conversion or in sprucing up the interior to better appeal to the dwindling number of firms hunting for downtown office space. No dice, he said.
So that led him to propose moving all the existing tenants to upper floors and converting floors two through six for servers and other data-center equipment. Part of the ground floor, he said, would be converted for Commonwealth Edison infrastructure to power the more energy-intensive use. But at least some of the ground-floor retail would be preserved, he said.
There are lots of specific questions to be answered about this plan, such as whether people really will want to work above a data center and whether retailers will want to lease space below one. Or even next to one.
But the biggest question is how such a use jibes with the best vision for post-pandemic downtown Chicago. The office market as we knew it before COVID-19 likely won’t return in any reasonable time frame, but a downtown full of people and life still must be what guides future decisions about adaptation and reuse.
And, while small-scale data centers do exist downtown, as far as we know none have been located in architecturally significant landmark buildings.
As preservationist Ward Miller, executive director of Preservation Chicago, told both us and the committee members, moving forward with a data center in 300 W. Adams creates a potential precedent for doing the same in other downtown landmarks. The 2 million-square-foot Marshall Field and Co. Building on State Street has made a steady go of converting the upper floors to office use, but who knows what the future of Macy’s is on the lower floors? A data center might be enticing for part of that hulking building.
Imagine the impact of that on the collective Chicago psyche.
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