• Marina City is now a $36 million project. That’s $386 million in 2024 money.

• The $3 million spent on just the site was at the time the largest single private land transaction in the history of Chicago.

• The plan is now for 896 apartments, parking for 900 cars, and a marina for 700 boats.

• Designed for middle-income families, rents will start at $115 per month, the equivalent of $1,234 per month in 2024.

Marina City did not invent mixed-use development but arguably it was the first to blend residential and commercial use on such a large scale.

The arrangement is popular today as it has been throughout most of human history. In 1916, zoning regulations in the United States started separating the two purposes, trying to keep people away from polluted industrial areas. The trend accelerated after World War II and started to slow in the early 1960s.

Marina City would celebrate mixed-use development with a movie theater, boat marina and yacht club, skating rink, bowling alley, restaurants, health clinic for union employees, ten-story office building, and a sculpture garden. The plan is for the ceiling of the theater to be covered with plastic air-filled domes that will be raised or lowered from the projection booth to adjust acoustics. The theater’s service elevator will be big enough to carry a truck. High-speed elevators in the towers will travel at 700 feet per minute. (Left) Site plan (circa 1960) of the “bridge level,” the level of the State Street and Dearborn Street bridges, of Marina City showing two “apartment bldg.” towers, ice skating rink, sculpture garden, and at top, a commercial building with “auto bank” at right.

The apartment towers are now 60 stories tall and at 555 feet they will be the tallest apartment buildings in the world and the third tallest building in Chicago.

16 curved balconies will protrude from each of 40 residential floors, starting with the 21st floor. Every room on the perimeter of each of the floors will have its own balcony. The apartments will surround a 35-foot-diameter core that contains utilities and mechanical equipment.

It is thought at the time that ground would be broken in May and that the entire project would be done the following year.

And then, there would be more Marina Cities.

“Once this project is a functioning unit here, we are planning to erect similar projects in other major cities,” says William L. McFetridge at the unveiling of a model of Marina City on February 29. (Left) Two professional models pose with the architectural model of Marina City in this promotional image. Curiously, according to The Art Institute of Chicago, the architectural model is missing. Says Lori Boyer, Exhibitions and Collections Manager, “It’s one of the mysteries of the building, as it was sizable and not easily moved or stored.”

On April 15, 1960, Bertrand Goldberg Associates produced a two-page typed manuscript. Marina City – The Central City Plan made the case for caution but then dared people to invest in Chicago’s center. Making downtown more habitable would not only have economic benefits but it would make people happy.

“People like to live closely and enjoy the work and the play which is the byproduct of high-density living,” the plan noted.

Marina City would take everything people do each day – living, working, recreation, and services such as restaurants and shops – and reshape it into a vertical pattern occupying one square block.

“Marina City is a plan for 24-hour living,” declared the BGA manuscript, “which no tenant could afford on less than a 24-hour basis. This means that the facilities for living pleasure offered by Marina City cannot be supported by a commuting population, or a weekend population. And if housing is something more than just shelter and running water, the new housing must provide the background for the leisure time which our work patterns are giving us.”

(Above) Floor plate of floors 21-52 in east tower.

According to BGA, more than 400 rental applications had been received from people wanting to live at Marina City, which was still more than a year away from being built.

On May 2, New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller appeared to take McFetridge up on his offer, inviting him and his union to build a housing development in New York similar to the Chicago complex.

In June 1960, with groundbreaking five months away, more than 600 rental applications had been received for the 896 apartments. The ten-story office building on the north side of the property was 30 percent rented to businesses that will pay six dollars per square foot for anything from a single office to 18,000 square feet per floor.

Marina City will earn $1.5 million in rent per year from commercial tenants and about the same from apartments. But it will come at a cost.