The McCormick Square Marriott Marquis and Wintrust Arena project shows how a design-build team can protect architectural intent while responding to a rapidly escalating construction market. The work combined a convention hotel, sports and entertainment arena, pedestrian connection, historic renovation, stormwater infrastructure and public open space on one Chicago site. Its most consequential moves were not cosmetic: the team changed the hotel tower’s geometry, lifted the arena bowl to grade and simplified the arena roof so the program could proceed without abandoning the concepts neighbors had supported.
The figures and quotations in this case study come from Building Design + Construction’s profile published May 14, 2018. They are reported project figures rather than the results of an independent audit, and amenity descriptions reflect that article’s period.
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What the project delivered
The development created two major buildings that operate as an urban event district rather than as isolated structures. The Marriott Marquis Chicago provides the convention-hotel component, while Wintrust Arena supplies a venue for sports, concerts and other entertainment. A pedestrian bridge links the buildings, allowing event and hotel functions to work together without forcing visitors back onto city streets.
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|---|---|
| Marriott Marquis Chicago | 40 stories; 1.2 million square feet; 1,205 guest rooms and suites |
| Wintrust Arena | 300,000 square feet; 22 suites; 479 club seats; sports, concert and entertainment uses |
| Historic integration | Renovation of the five-story American Book Company building, constructed in 1912, for meeting rooms and back-of-house uses |
| Site scope | Approximately 1.5 million square feet of new construction, renovation, bridge or pedestrian-way work, stormwater mitigation and preservation on one site |
The hotel program also included below-grade parking, retail, banquet and meeting rooms, ballrooms, a fitness center, and a restaurant and bar, as described in the 2018 profile. Those descriptions should not be read as a current operating guide; hotel and arena offerings can change.
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The arena was planned with audience-facing hospitality as well as the playing or performance bowl. Its reported program included suites, club seating, broadcast and support facilities, and food-and-beverage concessions. Keeping that program intact became a central test of the value-engineering process.
Why the site needed an integrated solution
A large convention hotel next to an arena can solve a practical problem for event visitors: people should be able to move from a meeting or game to lodging, dining and social space without a long, inconvenient trip. The project profile evokes the end-of-day taxi queue and the need to find a restaurant, return to a hotel to freshen up, or meet colleagues for a drink. The bridge and shared district planning address that circulation problem as part of the architecture, not as an afterthought.
The site also carried obligations beyond new construction. The American Book Company structure was a five-story 1912 building, so the team had to incorporate an existing historic fabric into a high-rise hotel project. Stormwater had to be managed in a dense urban setting, and the neighborhood needed usable open space. Treating those requirements as one coordinated scope allowed the project to connect transportation, public realm, preservation and building operations.
Owner, delivery model and design team
Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority (MPEA) was identified as the owner and client. Prairie District3 Partners (PD3) served as the design-build partnership responsible for delivering both buildings. The listed team included Bulley & Andrews, Clark Construction Group, Goettsch Partners, McKissack & McKissack Midwest, Moody Nolan and Old Veteran Construction.
Gensler and Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects acted as bridging designers for the hotel and arena, respectively. Goettsch Partners was the hotel architect of record, Moody Nolan was the arena architect of record, and Magnusson Klemencic Associates was the structural engineer. In a bridging arrangement, the design concepts and performance expectations are established before the delivery team completes and coordinates the construction documents. That structure gave PD3 room to develop buildable alternatives while the core design intent remained visible to the owner and community.
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Former MPEA Senior Director of Development John Nicolls said the team’s sensitivity to maintaining each building’s design concept helped PD3 win the work because neighbors had already bought into both concepts. The profile describes design and construction as cooperative and consultative, a critical condition when budget changes affect massing and public-facing form.
How cost escalation changed the design
Chicago’s construction market was escalating quickly enough to threaten both the budget and the original design vision. Rather than apply indiscriminate cuts late in construction, the team revisited the buildings’ fundamental geometry and construction methods. The following decisions are the clearest examples reported in the profile.
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|---|---|---|
| The hotel tower’s taller single-bar arrangement carried more area and complexity than the budget could support. | Reoriented the tower into a more efficient T-shaped wing layout and reduced the tower by several stories. | Preserved the hotel project while reducing the amount of tower construction. |
| The arena bowl was planned below grade, requiring substantial excavation and retaining work. | Raised the bowl to grade level. | The profile attributes $20 million in savings to avoiding excavation, earth retention, waterproofing and foundation-wall work. |
| The arena roof’s arched form used a taller series of undulations. | Reduced the roof height and the number of undulations. | Retained a distinctive arched roof expression with a simpler, less expensive geometry. |
| The arena program and desired quality had to survive market escalation. | Applied coordinated value engineering rather than removing the arena’s planned functions. | The article reports $70 million in value-engineering savings without changing the arena program. |
Raising the bowl was especially consequential because it changed the work below the building, not just what visitors see. Eliminating excavation and earth retention also removed associated waterproofing and foundation-wall operations. The profile presents the $20 million figure as the saving attributed to that decision; it does not provide an independent cost audit or a separate breakdown of each avoided trade.
The roof revision illustrates a different kind of discipline. The team did not discard the arched concept. It adjusted height and repetition so the roof could be built with less material and coordination while still reading as the intended civic form. Together, the tower, bowl and roof changes show why value engineering is most effective when architects, engineers, constructors and the owner make decisions before details are locked.
Schedule and construction execution
The profile reports a construction period from December 2014 through September 2017. It also says PD3 constructed both buildings in 25 months and that the arena was delivered 23 months after groundbreaking. Those figures describe different schedule frames in the article: the overall reported project period and the building-construction or groundbreaking milestones. They should therefore be quoted as reported rather than reconciled into a new, independently calculated duration.
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Design-build helped the team test cost and constructability decisions while design was progressing. Moving the arena bowl to grade, for example, could be evaluated as a coordinated structural, waterproofing and site-work change instead of being treated as a late contractor substitution. The same integrated process allowed the hotel’s revised T-shaped plan and the simplified roof to be developed without separating design responsibility from construction consequences.
The bridge, historic building connection and shared site utilities added interfaces that would have created risk under a fragmented handoff. Coordinating them through one partnership reduced the number of points at which scope could be misunderstood, although the source does not publish a risk register or a measured comparison with another delivery method.
Making a 1912 building part of a high-rise project
Renovating the American Book Company building required the team to preserve a five-story structure built in 1912 while adapting it to contemporary hotel operations. The project connected the building to the new hotel for meeting rooms and back-of-house uses. That approach gave the historic property a functional role in the larger development instead of treating it as a detached monument.
The connection also had practical implications. Meeting and service functions can occupy the older building while the tower carries guest rooms and other high-rise demands, allowing the two structures to contribute different capabilities. The profile does not provide a detailed condition assessment, preservation standard or list of retained materials, so the documented fact is the renovation and operational connection rather than a claim about the extent of original fabric preserved.
Stormwater and public-realm work
The project added infrastructure and neighborhood amenities alongside the buildings. Direct roof stormwater runoff was tied into an existing 3,385-foot-deep tunnel that transfers water to Lake Michigan. The stated objective was to reduce the volume of runoff entering the city sewer system. The tunnel connection is reported as a project feature; the profile does not publish post-occupancy measurements of runoff reduction.
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North of the hotel, the team added a 21,000-square-foot pocket park after Alderman Pat Dowell identified a need for neighborhood recreation space. The park included a playground and dog park. This was a change prompted by local input, not a decorative leftover from the building program. It demonstrates how a major private development can add a public amenity when the project team and civic representatives address a specific neighborhood gap.
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The profile reports that $160 million in construction contracts, described as 32% of the construction budget, went to minority- and women-owned businesses. It also records labor-hour totals tied to the project rather than to a citywide average.
| Reported category | Project figure |
|---|---|
| Contracts issued to minority- and women-owned businesses | $160 million, reported as 32% of the construction budget |
| Hours worked by minority workers | More than 967,000 hours |
| Hours worked by female workers | 72,000 hours |
| Hours worked by Chicago residents | Approximately 821,000 hours |
| Chicago resident hours from nearby wards | 134,000 hours |
These are project-profile statistics attributed to Building Design + Construction in 2018. They should not be generalized to other PD3 projects, to all Chicago construction, or treated as an independent impact evaluation.
What the case teaches design-build teams
Protect the concept before protecting every detail
The team established which parts of each building carried the public design idea, then adjusted geometry around those priorities. The tower could lose several stories and change its plan; the arena roof could lose height and undulations; the arena’s overall program and recognizable form remained. A useful early exercise is to identify, in writing, the elements that communities and users understand as non-negotiable.
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Look below grade for the largest savings
Moving the bowl to grade avoided several categories of underground work at once. This kind of decision can produce a larger effect than trimming finishes because it changes excavation, temporary support, waterproofing and foundation scope. It must be tested early with structural, geotechnical and operational teams so that accessibility, loading, egress and sightlines remain compliant.
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Use value engineering as a coordinated design exercise
The reported $70 million saving did not come from removing the arena program. It came from redesigning how the program was enclosed and supported. That distinction matters: a list of isolated substitutions can erode quality, while a coordinated change to massing or construction sequence can preserve the user experience.
Keep civic requirements in the baseline scope
The pocket park, historic connection and stormwater system were treated as parts of the project’s delivery, not optional enhancements to be considered after the buildings. Establishing those requirements early makes them visible in budgets, schedules and coordination models, reducing the chance that they disappear when escalation occurs.
Make schedule statements precise
Large projects often have several legitimate clocks: owner authorization, site work, groundbreaking, building construction and overall completion. The profile reports 25 months for both buildings, 23 months from groundbreaking to arena delivery, and a December 2014-to-September 2017 construction period. Publishing each milestone with its reference point prevents a headline duration from being mistaken for the entire project timeline.
How to read the reported numbers
The $500 million construction cost, floor areas, schedule milestones, savings and workforce figures in this article are all attributed to the May 14, 2018 Building Design + Construction profile. No independent audit of those totals was identified for this case study. They are useful for understanding the project’s stated scale and decision logic, but they should not be presented as audited benchmarks for estimating another hotel, arena or mixed-use development.
The same caution applies to operations. The hotel and arena amenities listed in the profile describe the project as covered in 2018. Current room inventories, event offerings, food service, parking arrangements and public access require confirmation from the operators before being used for present-day planning.
Why the project is a significant construction case study
McCormick Square demonstrates that cost control does not have to mean abandoning a project’s civic identity. The hotel became more efficient through a T-shaped tower, the arena avoided major underground work by moving its bowl to grade, and the roof retained its arched character with fewer and lower undulations. At the same time, the delivery included a bridge, a renovated 1912 building, stormwater infrastructure and a neighborhood park.
The result, as documented by the 2018 trade-publication profile, is a useful example of design-build decision-making under escalation: establish the public and operational priorities, test major geometry and site decisions early, and coordinate architecture, structure, construction and community commitments as one project rather than as competing packages.
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