Say goodbye to the giant crane in downtown Naperville's Water Street District
Construction of a hotel, banquet center, parking garage, restaurants and shops at a $93 million development in downtown Naperville is certainly adding to the city's skyline.
But this week, work on the Water Street District also took away an element of the downtown vista that's become a common sight: the giant yellow crane.
The 800,000-pound, 200-foot-tall crane has been used since July to place pieces of precast concrete into structures for the parking deck and hotel building at the new hospitality district just east of the Naperville municipal center and south of the DuPage River, said Deb Newman, a spokeswoman for developer Marquette Companies.
But on Wednesday, workers lowered the crane, folded it onto a truck bed and wheeled it away from the 2.4-acre site, where construction is expected to wrap up sometime this fall.
Restaurants and retailers included in the development include Hotel Indigo, Elements Banquets and Events, Bien Trucha Mexican small plates, Blue Sushi Sake Grill, Traveling Tots activity center and children's boutique and London Skye women's apparel. Plans also call for a plaza with artistic elements and a new section of Riverwalk paths.
"We're looking forward to announcing some exciting new tenants, working with Century Walk on public art, and are progressing just as we planned," Nick Ryan, CEO of Marquette Companies, said in a news release.
Work began last April when former buildings along the block-long stretch of Water Street were demolished and developers hosted a groundbreaking.
The project had been delayed a year because of changes to add a banquet facility, update design details and accommodate space needs of certain tenants.
It already was a long time coming. Plans for the Water Street District surfaced in 2007, but morphed several times from including condos to apartments and a Holiday Inn Express to the final version anchored with the boutique Hotel Indigo.
With the crane removed from the site, next steps of construction include mechanical, electrical, plumbing and elevator installation for the hotel and parking garage along with pouring of the walls for the upper-level boardwalk of the Riverwalk path.