Thomas J. Klutznick Company_Projects_Mixed Use Complexes_Water Tower Place, Chicago

Chicago's Michigan Avenue is one of the world's great boulevards. In the early 1970's, on one of its choicest sites - the full block on the east side of the avenue between Pearson and Chestnut streets, Mr. Klutznick and his father began planning and developing a project that was to become the 74-story retail-office-hotel-residential complex known as Water Tower Place. In concept, design and function, Water Tower Place was the prototype for large-scale, mixed-use urban projects. For one thing, it was the first in-town, multi-level shopping center in America--an idea so revolutionary at the time that retailers strongly resisted leasing space in the upper portion of the eight-story center, which was constructed around an atrium served by escalators and glass-enclosed elevators. For another, the main lobby of the 22-story Ritz-Carlton hotel - at the time of its 1976 opening, it was the first Ritz to have been built in the United States since 1928 - is on the building's twelfth floor. For still another, each of the structure's mixed-uses has its own separate entrance and transportation system. All of these pioneering developmental innovations have since become widely copied in this country and abroad.

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Thomas J. Klutznick Company