Chicago's Never Built Skyscraper—Now a Hole in the Ground and a Pile of Dirt

Kim Janssen checks in on the hole in the ground that almost became the Chicago Spire skyscraper, and the second-tallest building in the world after the Burj Khalifa.

After the Great Recession forced Spire developer Garrett Kelleher to halt construction with only a 76-foot-deep hole that would have been the building's foundation to show, the property has since changed hands and not much else.

Janssen reports, however, that "[w]orkers last week started moving dirt to form a landscaped berm that will block the view of the 110-foot diameter hole from a row of 10 Streeterville row homes on the 400 block of East Water Street." The camouflage effort was followed by a communication from current owners the Related Midwest announcing, in effect, that there's nothing to see, or expect, at the Spire.