page_title: Trump International Hotel and Tower (Chicago)
section_title: Construction
hierarchical_section_title: Trump International Hotel and Tower (Chicago) / Development / Construction
caption_attribution_description: English: Trump International Hotel and Tower (Chicago) from Daley Center
context_page_description: The Trump International Hotel and Tower is a skyscraper condo-hotel in downtown Chicago, Illinois. The building, named for businessman and later U.S. president Donald Trump, was designed by architect Adrian Smith of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Bovis Lend Lease built the 98-story structure, which reaches a height of 1,388 feet including its spire, its roof topping out at 1,171 feet. It is next to the main branch of the Chicago River, with a view of the entry to Lake Michigan beyond a series of bridges over the river. The building received publicity when the winner of the first season of The Apprentice reality television show, Bill Rancic, chose to manage the construction of the tower over managing a new Trump National Golf Course and resort in Los Angeles.
  Trump announced in 2001 that the skyscraper would become the tallest building in the world, but after the September 11 attacks that same year, the architects scaled back the building's plans, and its design underwent several revisions. When topped out in 2009, it became the second-tallest building in the U.S.
context_section_description: Bill Rancic, The Apprentice's season-one winner in 2004, was originally hired to manage the project for a $250,000 salary. Rancic's title was President of the Trump International Hotel and Tower, but the title was somewhat misleading, because he was in fact learning on the job as an "Apprentice." Rancic's contract was renewed after his first year, but in September 2005, it appeared that his employment with Trump would finish at the end of his second year in April 2006. During 2005, Donald Trump, Jr., who had been involved in the building since its earliest stages in 1999, was overseeing the construction with weekly visits, while Rancic worked on sales and marketing. In December 2005, Rancic made it clear that he wanted to continue working for Trump, and in April 2006, his contract was renewed for a third year. In that year Donald Trump's children began to assume prominent public roles as in the Trump Organization; by January 2007, all three adult Trump children (Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump) were executives in the acquisitions and development division of the organization. By the time the Chicago Trump Tower's hotel opened in the building in January 2008, Donald Trump and his three adult children were in the spotlight, overseeing the construction.
  Bovis Lend Lease, noted for work on Disneyland Paris, Petronas Towers, and the Time Warner Center, was the construction company. James McHugh Construction Co, the concrete subcontractor, implemented a comprehensive formwork for the construction of the building. At the completion of construction the building was the tallest formwork structure in the world, and follows in the footsteps of its neighbor, Marina City, as well as Chicago's Two Prudential Plaza, as past recordholders. Concrete moulding was used, because using a traditional ironwork structure would have required a building footprint that would have been too big for the property size, proportional to the height of the designed building. A steel frame would have had to be 25 feet (7.6 m) wider to have supported a building of this proportion. Concrete will counteract the force of wind with the force of gravity of the 360,000-short-ton (330,000 t) building. A new chemical process that leveraged more fluid liquid concrete facilitated pumping concrete up several hundred feet to the elevating construction site. Although previous technology limited formwork to 700 feet (213.4 m), this technology permitted the pumping of concrete 1,700 feet (518.2 m) high.
  The building is cantilevered into a section of 420 million-year-old limestone bedrock 110 feet (33.5 m) underground. It uses 4-foot (1.2 m)-wide stilt-like pillars that were drilled beneath the building. Every 30 feet (9.1 m) around its perimeter, steel-reinforced concrete was poured into these holes to form the structural support. On top of these caisson shafts and pillars, an 8,400-short-ton (7,600 t) concrete pad foundation was built to support the building's spine. The building has 241 caissons, and the majority of the caissons only descend 75 feet (22.9 m) into hard clay. However, 57 of them go an additional 35 feet (10.7 m) into the ground, including 6 feet (1.8 m) of bedrock. The concrete spine uses five I-beam-shaped walls and exterior columns, narrowing to two as the building rises. Each floor is separated by a concrete slab, and stainless steel, glass, and aluminum panels are attached to each floor. 50,000 short tons (45,000 t) of reinforcing steel bars, called rebar, support the hotel. The extensive use of concrete makes the building more fireproof. Of the $600 million construction budget, $130 million was earmarked for the James McHugh Construction Co, who handled the 180,000-cubic-yard (140,000 m³) concrete-only portion of the job.
  Two earlier business decisions by the Chicago Sun-Times led to substantial savings of time and money during the Trump Tower's construction. The original 1950s sea wall was built by the newspaper company to bomb-shelter thickness, to withstand a Cold War attack, and thus did not have to be broken down and rebuilt. Furt
caption: View from Richard J. Daley Center three months before the hotel opened amid construction (September 14, 2007)
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