Chicago Daily News Building moves toward landmark status with a Class L rehab plan

The Chicago Daily News Building entered a new preservation phase on May 5, when the Commission on Chicago Landmarks approved both a preliminary landmark recommendation and a Class L tax incentive for the 26-story tower at 2 North Riverside Plaza. The action puts the 1929 Holabird & Root building on a formal path toward protection while supporting a rehabilitation program for its office spaces, public interiors, exterior masonry, and riverfront elements.

For a site built around air rights, newspaper production, rail infrastructure, riverfront urban design, and Art Deco civic theater, the paired action is especially useful. It treats the building not as a frozen monument, but as a working commercial structure whose historic value depends on the lobby, concourse, plaza, dock arcade, and river-facing massing remaining legible through a new investment cycle.

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The building's next chapter is being written through preservation review and office rehab at the same time.

What Happened This Week

Urbanize Chicago reported on May 5 that the Commission on Chicago Landmarks approved a preliminary landmark recommendation and Class L tax incentive for the Chicago Daily News Building. The planned rehabilitation is tied to Bluestar Properties' work on the building and its office interiors.

The commission staff identified the tower's association with the Chicago Daily News, its Holabird & Root Art Deco design, its riverfront urban-design role, and its early use of air rights over active railroad tracks as major parts of the case. Urbanize also reported a total project cost of $69.7 million, with the Class L incentive expected to provide about $28 million in tax abatement over 12 years.

Why The Site Reading Changes

The building now needs to be read as a live preservation-finance case, not only as one of Chicago's best-known newspaper towers. Landmark designation would protect exterior elevations, rooflines, the riverfront plaza, the dock arcade, and significant public interior spaces while the Class L path makes rehabilitation financially more plausible.

That pairing is important for office-era landmarks along the river. The tower's historic importance comes partly from how it organized movement: railroad tracks below, a public concourse connection, a riverfront plaza, and a setback skyline profile that still helps define the South Branch.

What To Watch Next

The next public records to track are the final landmark recommendation, Committee on Zoning action, City Council approval, and any permit filings that clarify how the concourse, lobby, storefronts, masonry, plaza, and building systems will be handled.

Field documentation should focus on the river-facing plaza and arcade before work begins, since those pieces make the building more than a vertical office block. They show how a private newspaper headquarters helped prototype a public-facing riverfront long before the current Riverwalk era.