Its 27-story lightning bolt struck the North Loop on May 27. Since then, theWit Hotel has received generally good reviews from experts in architecture, travel, hospitality, and Chicago nightlife.

Marina City Online Pictorial by Steven Dahlman

Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin called theWit “a work of pre-crash architectural exuberance making its debut amid a post-crash depression.”

Architecture writer and Marina City resident Lynn Becker calls theWit “a very lively building” and a welcome contrast to the Renaissance Chicago Hotel, located across State Street, which has a style of architecture Becker describes as “dead-on-arrival pre-fabricated.”

“What I especially love about the Wit,” says Becker, “is walking by a street corner formerly dominated by donuts, greasy chicken, and pigeons and finding a bright, lively place, pulsing with life. It’s especially important that flamboyant lobby is not locked behind masonry, but just the other side of a curtain wall that lets all the pizzazz spill out onto the street.”

(Left) Photographed from a nearby L platform, the west side (entire height) of theWit Hotel, located at North State Street & East Lake Street in downtown Chicago. The green curtain wall of the high-rise is accented with a jagged yellow “lightning bolt.”

(Below left) Sign and main entrance of theWit from west side of State Street. (Below right) Where the lightning bolt touches down, the main entrance of the hotel, photographed from the L platform.

Located about two blocks away, theWit has become part of the view for Marina City residents. And conversely.

“Actually, if you want to know, my first impressions of the site were...of Marina City,” says architect Jackie Koo, whose design includes guest suites with corner bay windows facing north and west.

“Initially, I was wondering whether I should address that view more prominently – which I did not, except for the fact that we did take the glass on that side around the alley, which typically would not happen. It’s not required for light and vent for those hotel rooms that are there.”

“We didn’t want to have a blank wall there,” she says, “because the views of Marina City are so fantastic from that corner.”

There are other views. The hotel is intimately close to 35 East Wacker Drive, formerly known as Jeweler’s Building, and overlooks Millennium Park.

“A number of wonderful things that we have in the building that are very unusual [include] a window in the elevator that’s through a corridor which is not really that common because again it’s not required for light and vent – and it’s additional money that the developer doesn’t necessarily have to pay except to capture the view.”

Koo has worked in Chicago since 1997. She was a senior associate at DeStefano and Partners. She designed the 185-room Fairfield Inn & Suites Marriott in the Streeterville neighborhood. In 2005, she started Koo and Associates, now a six-architect firm located in the Monadnock Building.

theWit is the first major project for the 45-year-old architect, who majored in philosophy at the University of Chicago.

Currently, she is working on an interior design project for Chicago Housing Authority – the Britton Budd Apartments in Lincoln Park – and affordable housing units on the west side of Chicago.

(Top left) Jackie Koo, architect of theWit Hotel. Photo by Dan Dry/University of Chicago Magazine.

(Bottom left) Looking back from theWit. Marina City as seen from a corner suite on the 22nd floor. Photo by Steven Dahlman.

John Callan, General Manager of theWit since March 2009, says they are “in it for the long haul.”

The parent company of nearby Hotel Sax has called 2009 “extremely difficult and challenging” and Chicago one of the weakest markets for hotels.

Group demand industry-wide in the U.S., according to the president of LaSalle Hotel Properties, is down 20 percent from a year ago. Leisure travel is not as bad, with demand down no more than five percent in the second quarter of 2009.

Callan agrees. “The realty of it is...the economy is down and business travel is down. So, what do you do to promote a Plan B? Certainly Chicago is such a great leisure destination. Chicago’s a great city. It’s more stable, I think, in the midwest and Chicago, maybe than the northeast or California, where there seems to be great upswings in economic activity, but also downswings.”

theWit is privately owned by ECD Company, a 40-year-old company based in Lincolnshire, Illinois. Its $250 million portfolio includes apartments, condominiums, single family homes, industrial buildings, commercial spaces, mixed use developments, and hotels.

Most of the $100 million it took to build the 27-story, 238-room luxury hotel, part of the Doubletree chain, came from Capmark Financial Group. a commercial real estate finance company based in Pennsylvania. Capmark loaned ECD $82 million. However, in April, Philadelphia Business Journal reported Capmark near bankruptcy. On September 3, the news was better, with the company hoping to be sold to Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway for $490 million. Bankruptcy was avoided, said Capmark, by a $1.5 billion loan in May from undisclosed lenders.

The $100 million bought 7,000 square feet of meeting facilities, a 2,500-square-foot dividable ballroom, conference rooms, and a $1 million digital high-definition multimedia theater – that all must now be put to work.

When the hotel opened, ECD President Scott Greenberg, who is said to have come up with the name of the hotel, pointed out theWit’s proximity to the nearby “Block 37” mixed-use development nearing completion, the newly opened Joffrey Tower, new retail stores, residential towers, theaters, and other attractions.

“We are extremely proud to introduce theWit as part of the rebirth of Chicago’s State Street during an incredible moment in the city’s history,” said Greenberg in May. “Our iconic lightning bolt on the front of our hotel symbolizes how we’ve harnessed the energy and excitement of some of the best architects and designers in the country to create an incredible gathering place for leisure and business travelers in one of the most dynamic cities in the world.”

The uniqueness of theWit can be heard in the distinctive sounds that are piped into the corridors on guest room floors, such as roosters crowing in the morning and sounds of a harbor in the evening.

Even the wake-up calls are quirky. Guests can be stirred by recorded messages from President Obama, Mayor Daley, Harry Caray, and so on.

theWit can seem like two buildings. There is the glass structure that contains the lobby, a second-floor library, and guest rooms.

And then there is the other, that houses restaurants, meeting rooms, and more guest rooms. This part of the hotel has fewer fans. Even University of Chicago Magazine, which was doing an overall flattering article on alumnus Jackie Koo, said it looked like “a concrete high-rise.”

Blair Kamin was more blunt. “The building’s north side is utterly banal, recalling the monster condo towers of River North.”

Koo says it was the developer, ECD, that wanted to give the hotel’s pub and restaurant, located on the first and second floors of the second structure, their own identities.

One obvious potential issue that was avoided is noise from the nearby L platform. To address this, Koo specified double-layered windows.

“The Wit is just fun,” wrote Jay Pridmore in University of Chicago Magazine. Said Kamin, “Few match this one for engaging and enlivening the urban scene.”

Before theWit, this commercial building dominated the block. It featured Govnors Pub Restaurant and Brewery (which closed in December 2008), Baskin Robbins, and Dunkin’ Donuts.

Interior photographs by Wayne Cable. Exterior photographs by Steven Dahlman.

Thanks also to...

• Lynn Becker
• John Callan, theWit Hotel
• David Clarkson, Transwestern Commercial Services
• Jackie Koo, Koo and Associates
• Michael Michalak