Jewelers Building Renovation, 35 East Wacker Drive, Chicago

A 1927 Beaux-Arts tower with a gilded dome is getting $25 million of amenity space, which tells you roughly everything about what it takes to lease a vintage Chicago office building in 2026.

Project Scope

The Jewelers Building at 35 East Wacker Drive runs 40 floors and 556,200 square feet. Joachim Giaver and Frederick Dinkelberg designed it, and the city designated it a Chicago Landmark in 1994. CRG and The Prime Group bought it in 2024 for $35.5 million and now own it alongside Clayco and TP Management Co.

The renovation adds a fine-dining restaurant, lobby and rooftop bars operated by Roanoke Hospitality Group, expanded fitness and wellness space including infrared saunas, cold plunge and group workout studios, and reworked conference, event and coworking areas. Work starts in fall 2026 with the restaurant and bar concepts opening in 2027. No renovation architect has been named publicly. Preservation Chicago publicly endorsed the plan.

Why It Matters

The math on vintage Loop office space has not worked for several years. Tenants who will pay for character will not pay for a building without the amenity package a 2020s tower offers, and landmark status limits what an owner can change on the exterior to compete. Spending $25 million against a $35.5 million basis, almost entirely on interior program, is a bet that the differentiator is what happens inside the terra-cotta rather than the terra-cotta itself.

For the trades, this is the shape of a lot of Loop work over the next several years: heavy MEP and finishes inside a landmarked shell, with kitchen, spa and pool-adjacent wet program dropped into floors never designed to carry it. Structural reinforcement and waterproofing scope on this kind of conversion routinely runs ahead of budget, and the rooftop bar sitting under a 1927 dome is the assembly most likely to generate change orders.

Project Team & Details