The new commercial infrastructure, which will be built an average of 91 meters (300 feet) below ground level in the southeast of the city of Chicago (Illinois, USA) will be called ‘The Invert Chicago’, because unlike of large stores and conventional business centers, it will be built in an inverted way, that is to say downwards instead of upwards.
“Some people have said that we are crazy, but the truth is that this project is 100 percent possible,” say their boosters.
The sprawling lot along the Calumet River where this underground business complex will be built was home to the steel industry, but the area has been unoccupied since those industrial plants began to close in the 1970s and 1980s, in part because the soil became so contaminated that no developer can afford to clean it up, according to Fast Company.
It is new project It will return jobs to the neighborhood and will be built at a depth where it will avoid disturbing the contaminated soil and which also has the advantage of maintaining a stable ambient temperature even in subzero winters or sweltering summers, says this American publication of trends.
This underground business complex will revitalize some 56.65 hectares (140 acres) of land and offer some 550,000 square meters (6 million square feet) of net climate-controlled multipurpose space at 76-106 meters (250-350 feet) below the surface at 11118 S. Buffalo in Chicago.
A ‘POSSIBLE INSANITY’ THAT WILL BEGIN IN 2023
The construction of this real estate complex could begin soon, in 2023, with the first 23,200 square meters (250,000 square feet) of leasable space that is expected to be available within 3 years after the start of construction, according to EFE, Steve King, President of The Invert Chicago (TIC).
An initial underground space is anticipated to be available by 2024. The finished space will have two levels, with a 12-meter (40-foot) high ceiling, and access via multiple modes of transportation, according to the project.
It points out that the entire surface area of this development could take between 12 and 15 years to complete, depending on market conditions, and that there are many possibilities of building other complexes of these characteristics in the future in other locations in the United States and in the world.
More underground space will continue to be created each year, depending on demand, as explained by TIC.
“For real substantive change that provides opportunities for generations to come, big ideas and bold changes are required; you have to think differently than in the past. And this project is only limited by imagination, “according to King.
The project site, which currently functions as a shipping, rail and truck terminal, was used for most of the 20th century by the steel industry, which later closed leaving the property contaminated and the land in a rather bad state of disrepair. , he points out.
Rehabilitating this abandoned site for possible development at ground level would be prohibitively expensive, but TIC has found an imaginative solution to revitalize the area: reverse the construction process and build ‘below the surface’ rather than ‘from the surface’ ‘upwards, he points.
This project is expected to create hundreds of construction jobs over several years and thousands of permanent, high-paying jobs for a wide range of industries and employers, according to Alberto I. Rincón, Director of Community Planning for ICT.
The naturally constant temperature and humidity offered by this type of construction are ideal for uses such as vertical farming, ‘Cloud’ computing, laboratory work, light manufacturing, logistics and specialized warehousing, for example medical, according to Rincón.
A SMALL-SCALE UNDERGROUND CITY
He explains that the construction techniques necessary for this large multipurpose underground space have already been used throughout the city in large projects such as tunnel networks for pedestrian and road use, passenger and cargo transport and flood control, as well as parking lots and stations. of CTA train, among other underground infrastructures.
Most buildings and warehouses, up to about 100,000 square meters (one million square feet), are vertical in nature. The Invert is literally going to put those buildings underground, in much larger spaces, according to Isaac Yun, vice president of design at TIC.
It points out that underground construction offers environmentally sustainable advantages, using far fewer materials such as roofs, windows, insulation and steel than vertical buildings, and being able to bring most construction materials to the site on barges, lake boats or railways, in instead of transporting them in trucks.
The Invert admits that this project will bring additional traffic to the area, but notes that the type of businesses and tenants that this complex will host will require 20 percent fewer trucks than those estimated to circulate in 2040 in that same area, as predicted by the urban planning agency CMAP, which did not have this undertaking when it made these forecasts.
Yun stresses that the project will not disturb the contaminated parts of the land, developing around and below those lands to create a marketable underground space, avoiding additional health risks, as well as the need for special excavation, transport and landfill costs.
Because subsurface temperatures are stable throughout the year, energy use is expected to be reduced by about 75 percent compared to traditional surface installations, according to Yun.
Likewise, solar energy systems will be installed in the open air to illuminate and ventilate the underground facilities, and feed other public services, which will allow balancing the energy produced and consumed on the site, and vegetation will be added to green the surface, while the heart and the soul of the project will be underground, according to this expert.
In this future underground space could be installed, in addition to businesses, a health and wellness center, a community meeting space, a recreation and soccer area, an adult learning site and after-school programs for students and a shared workspace for professionals and entrepreneurs, among other ideas contributed by the community.
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