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[Southsider2k12]

https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/promine...a18e43adb5.html

Soon, Michigan City's long low-slung skyline will start to get more vertical.

The $280 million SoLa development will tower 14 stories over the Lake Michigan shoreline. Flaherty & Collins plans to build an $80 million 12-story transit-oriented development near the new South Shore Line Station.

Though neither new development will be as tall as the 22-story Spa Blu Tower at the Blue Chip Casino Hotel Spa by Trail Creek east of downtown, they will give the city's commercial district more height than the two- to three-story buildings that now line the main drag of Franklin Street.

"This is monumental. We're a small town in the Midwest and we're really punching above our weight class," Economic Development Corporation Michigan City Executive Director Clarence Hulse said.


Scott Goodman, who helped develop Fulton Market in the West Loop, McDonald's global headquarters and Google's Midwest headquarters in Chicago, is leading YAB Development Partners, which is building the 628,000-square-foot SoLa project at the You Are Beautiful site downtown. It will include two boutique hotels, a rooftop pool overlooking Lake Michigan, condos, townhomes, upscale restaurants, bars and 25,000 square feet of retail space.


"This is a legacy project," Hulse said. "We don't get to see this kind of thing very often. This is going to have a positive effect for years to come."

The project should help draw more people to the Lake Michigan shoreline, Hulse said.

"It becomes a place where you want to hang out and watch the beach from a very different setting," he said. "You don't have to go to the waterfront to enjoy it."

Visitors like to eat and shop, and the project will bring more amenities that should draw more visitors, Hulse said. It should benefit existing attractions like the Lighthouse Place Premium Outlets, the Uptown Arts District and the Blue Chip Casino.

It should, for instance. help Blue Chip lure more conventions and conferences.

"People in banking, who are federal retirees or in churches don't like to stay in casino hotels but they will have conferences there," Hulse said. "So it helps them."