Adaptive Reuse of a Chicago Tall Building Gets Social Media Boost From “The Skyscraper Guy”

As cities across the nation grapple with hovering workplace vacancies of their city cores, one developer in Chicago is utilizing social media to drive curiosity in his plan to transform workplace house into residences in an almost 100-year-old downtown constructing thought of an architectural gem that has fallen on onerous occasions.

The Pittsfield Constructing has develop into a viral sensation, due to social media posts seen by hundreds of thousands of individuals around the globe that doc plans to revive the 38-story tower, whose authentic design combines Artwork Deco and Gothic particulars and gives sweeping views of Lake Michigan, Millennium Park and the Loop.

That surge in curiosity within the largely vacant constructing is credited to Tom Liravongsa, a developer who bought flooring 1-12 and 22-28 within the constructing for $7.5 million in 2023 in a foreclosures public sale. He stated he plans to transform them from workplace house into 224 residential residences with trendy facilities, whereas sustaining the constructing’s authentic components—a gray terracotta exterior, coffer ceilings, brass elevator doorways and lighting fixtures, a copper roof, white marble columns, wrought iron railings and wooden paneling.

The constructing already contains 228 rental residence items on eight flooring owned by Chicago-based Marc Realty since 2000.

Since he began posting updates in regards to the constructing in April, Liravongsa, 42, who’s managing director of Grand Rapids, Mich.-based actual property funding and asset administration agency L’Cre Global, calls himself “The Skyscraper Man” on TikTok and Instagram. His movies have garnered about 80 million views and have attracted lots of of 1000’s of followers.

In movies highlighting varied options of the Graham, Anderson, Probst & White-designed constructing, Liravongsa says the social media following has allowed him to construct lists of individuals concerned about ultimately renting an residence within the buioding and of contractors and distributors from as far-off as Germany that need to be concerned within the renovation course of.

One TikTok put up that racked up 8 million views reveals Liravongsa dropping a chunk of mail down an ornately detailed brass mail chute and explaining why chutes have been later banned for hearth security causes. In one other video on Instagram, the place Liravongsa has accrued 381,000 followers, he factors out a number of the building’s random intriguing features, together with a speakeasy from the Prohibition Period and a hidden room that’s not on the unique blueprints. In one other, he describes options within the basement that he says “low-key scare me” together with a coal chute, a catwalk and the underside of a smokestack that extends 40 tales to the rooftop.

 “We’re discovering that individuals need to get pleasure from these older buildings,” Liravongsa says. “We are saying, ‘Right here’s a landmark that you could go in [via social media]. It’s lively. You possibly can expertise it.’”

Tom Liravongsa reveals off an ornate gentle fixture within the five-story atrium of The Pittsfield Constructing.
Picture courtesy of Tom Liravongsa

Liravongsa says the posts additionally present “what folks did [in construction and design] 100 years in the past and the way it’s nonetheless lasting. This craft high quality is tough to duplicate nowadays. It’s not that you could’t do it, however lots of that talent set has dissipated.”

Liravongsa is working with the Chicago-based architectural agency Papageorge Haymes Partners in adapting the constructing.

Jen Masengarb, govt director of AIA Chicago, says the Pittsfield Constructing, named a Chicago Landmark in 2002, is properly suited to a residential conversion due to its slender tower ground plates and lightweight wells that enable pure gentle into the constructing.
“However, as with every constructing nearing 100 years previous, the actual challenges— past the financing—lie in modernization of the constructing’s techniques and envelope,” she says.  

Liravongsa says the constructing has 15 to 16 elevator shafts with house to accommodate MEP techniques.

“The great thing about these older buildings is that you’ve so many extra elevators than trendy buildings,” he says. “You should utilize these shafts in your techniques and that alleviates lots of issues. We now have big shafts that you could run techniques by means of with out having to drill by means of the flooring.”

The highway to revitalizing the Pittsfield constructing has not been straightforward. A earlier proprietor, Morgan Reed filed for Chapter 11 chapter in 2017 that prompted Chinese language-Canadian enterprise proprietor Xia Hua “Edward” Gong to buy the constructing throughout a chapter public sale. Gong’s portion of the constructing deteriorated after the Ontario Securities Fee charged him in December 2017 with prison securities fraud in Canada. A settlement was reached in that case, however a foreclosures lawsuit was filed in 2022 with Liravongsa buying Gong’s flooring within the constructing in 2023. Though Gong then sued over the foreclosures sale, that lawsuit was dropped.

“It’s all been cleared. They settled that. That’s why we’ve been off to the races,” Liravongsa says.

Liravongsa declined to supply specifics of different developments that his firm has dealt with aside from a 1871-era boutique constructing in Grand Rapids, Mich., and different early-stage initiatives in Miami and Austin, Texas.

Masengarb praises Liravongsa’s efforts to unfold the phrase in regards to the charms of the Pittsfield constructing that she says are creating curiosity in adaptive reuse of older tall buildings. “The place engineers and designers watching his movies may see only a mundane century-old air plenum, for instance, Tom’s dramatic storytelling abilities brings the general public alongside to find these ghostly and seemingly forgotten mechanical areas,” she says.

 “I feel it’s a really intelligent strategy,” provides Kendra Parzen, advocacy supervisor for Landmarks Illinois. “Residential is what we want and it makes absolute sense to adapt the Pittsfield constructing for residential use.”

 Liravongsa says utilizing social media to create curiosity in a mission is uncommon for a developer. “I’d say builders really by no means get on social media, they usually’d cringe on the thought of posting a narrative, They simply would. Even I do typically, ” he says. However I’ve spent a lot time on this constructing that I feel it’s not proper to maintain it to myself after which say ‘It is a cool constructing. Tenants, come and stay right here.'”

Liravongsa says social media can be serving to him mould the constructing into what the market needs and making certain it thrives down the highway. “As builders, now we have a imaginative and prescient, and we’re delivering buildings for a future that’s three to 5 years [or longer] out, so, as a developer, you actually must create the long run,” he says.