Even Obamas Mies Van Der Rohe Digs Wait For Stimulus Makeover
The skyscrapers status as a Ludwig Mies van der Rohe building in the presidents adopted hometown hasnt moved it to the head of the line. Seven months after the stimulus package was passed, little of the more than $100 million designated to renovate the 43-story structure has been spent.
“Thats too long — the economy is hurting now,” said Karen Barnes, 46, who was laid off this month as a health-care auditor and was helping set up the Berghoff Oktoberfest in the Kluczynski plaza for $10 an hour. “People need jobs.”
The building, completed in 1975 and managed by the General Services Administration, is significant in a city renowned for architecture because its a prime example of Mies van der Rohes mid-century modernist style. While the tower has amenities such as rapid elevators and motion sensors for restroom lighting, the renovation will boost its efficiency.
“The idea is to upgrade the stock of buildings in our inventory to better energy performance,” said David Wilkinson, a spokesman for the agency.
The GSA has awarded $10.7 million for design work and construction management services on the building, the agency said in an e-mailed statement. Wilkinson said he doesnt know when the renovation and the jobs that go with the rest of the $102.8 million project will start.
Slow Going
“We are very conscious of the fact that things are not moving as quickly as people would like them to,” said Wilkinson, whose office is in the building. Even after contracts are awarded, hiring will take time because workers must go through background checks, he said.
Such delays in spending stimulus funds are resonating at union halls around Chicago.
“Weve got up to 30 percent of our members unemployed in some of our locals,” said Tom Villanova, president of the Chicago & Cook County Building & Construction Trades Council. “This is the worst it has ever been. We wish it could be sped up with money on the street.”
Across the country, only transportation projects have lived up to the stimulus packages promise, said Stephen Sandherr, chief executive officer of the Associated General Contractors of America, a trade association based in Arlington, Virginia.
“The expectation was that these projects were going to hit the ground in short order,” Sandherr said. “For various, sundry reasons, they havent.”
Michael Welch, president of BRB Contractors Inc. in Topeka, Kansas, said his company was delayed about three months on upgrades to a wastewater treatment plant that was converted to a stimulus project.
“We are sitting out here in mid-America and waiting for projects and laying people off,” he said. “Its just business as usual with the federal agencies.”
The Kluczynski building was chosen to receive stimulus funds because it met two primary goals: It could put money “back into the economy quickly” and could become a “high- performance green building,” the GSA said in an e-mailed statement.
“We are very grateful to the GSA that it recognizes it as having historic value,” said Jason Neises, vice president of tour operations for the Chicago Architecture Foundation. “In Chicago, you dont mess with Mies. Hes just like Daniel Burnham and Frank Lloyd Wright.”
Man of Steel
Mies is acknowledged as one of the 20th centurys greatest architects. Born in Germany, he came to Chicago in 1938 and left his mark on the city with an unmistakable style that made the glass and structural steel of his buildings the chief element of design.
Obama, who was born in Hawaii and arrived in Chicago in 1985 to work as a community organizer, had his presidential transition office housed on the 38th floor of the sleek, black Kluczynski building at 230 S. Dearborn Street. He gave a 2002 speech from the plaza outside opposing an invasion of Iraq, and as a senator he had a district office there. The building remains home to an office for Senator Dick Durbin, the chambers No. 2 Democrat.