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Purple Hotel to be Replaced by Large 'New Urbanist' Plaza

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A venture of North Capital Group and architect Antunovich Associates has fabricated the first set of renderings for the hotel/retail/apartment complex destined for the Purple Hotel's now-vacant acreage. It's a reflexive and easy-to-anticipate design by the architect of Roosevelt Collection (see the similarity?), and it's being billed as "new urbanist" by Joe Antunovich. That's actually a fairly accurate assessment— a degree of self containment with functional green space, living, working, and shopping spaces has been planned for, and, like many new urbanist ground-up concepts, it will be a disconnected island in the 'burbs largely dependent on automobiles and disguised parking garages.

The $130M proposal, presented Tuesday night to the Village of Lincolnwood, will be anchored by a 210-room Marriott-brand hotel, 110 apartments, a grocery store, plentiful retail and restaurants, and 879 parking spaces. It will consume the entirety of the 11-acre plot. According to North Capital's Neal Stein, letters of intent from prospective tenants are already rolling in and "the goal is for it to be a regional destination." The Sun-Times' David Roeder and Fran Spielman critique the many hard edges of the wedge-shaped buildings, as well as their relatively stark coloring. Are tans and grays worthy successors to the Purple Hotel? There's still a lot of fleshing out to be done, and construction won't start till at least next June.
·So long, Purple Hotel. Hello, 'new urbanism'? [Sun-Times]
·Developers unveil plans for Purple Hotel site [Crain's]
·Purple Hotel Coverage [Curbed Chicago]