Judge Orders Property be Given Back to Lender, Officially Sealing the Chicago Spire’s Fate

Here at UnBeige, we sound a bit like a broken record when it comes to Santiago Calatrava‘s Chicago Spire. While it’s long been common knowledge that the tower, which was to sit close to Lake Michigan and drastically alter the city’s skyline, has long since been another architectural casualty of the financial fall, after a series of big problems dogging the project, we started calling it officially dead back in August of last year. Then we did it again this May when the building closed its sales office. Then we called it once more in October when its development company was hit with a $77 million foreclosure suit. Now we’re finally (finally!) ready to say that the project is officially (officially!) no more, with the Chicago Tribune reporting that a judge has ordered that the developer, Garrett Kelleher, hand over the property the Spire was to be built upon (currently just a very large hole in the ground) to its lender and just one of the many groups Kelleher’s company owes money to, Anglo Irish Bank Corp, Ltd.. So until we post that the Spire is definitely no more once again in the coming months, consider this the quiet final-final finale.

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