Another West Town touchstone is becoming brimstone. The Bridgford Foods building at 170 North Green Street will soon be a memory, according to the West Loop Community Organization. It says that CRG, the development arm of Clayco, plans to knock the building down real soon now.
Four years ago, we told you about a 17-story HPA-designed project for this location. But WLCO says that Clayco is still working on what it will do with the land next.
What’s coming “next” is about as clear as the vision of the guy who stole my prescription sunglasses from my car. Which is not surprising, considering how the world persists in being all screwed up. In terms of design, who knows? Clayco is all over the map. It’s the force behind the bland block down the boulevard known as Fulton East. But it’s also behind 100 Above the Park in Saint Louis, where it tapped the Studio Gang gang to put together a really interesting and more glassy version of Chicago’s Solstice on the Park.
We don’t see any demolition permits granted for the Bridgford location yet, but we do see a permit to decommission all seven freight elevators on site, so surely it’s coming soon. The purge is expected to take all Winter, so hopefully Clayco will have Santa drop a Gang-designed residential tower in our stockings to liven up what is perhaps the most bland of Chicago’s neighborhood gentrification waves.