http://www.thenewsdispatch.com/articles/20.../11/news/n1.txt

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Planned hotel will reach new heights

By Amanda Haverstick, The News-Dispatch

Blue Chip's building will be one of the tallest in Northern Indiana


The recent announcement by Blue Chip Casino that it plans to build a 22-story hotel will have a major impact on the skyline of Michigan City - and northern Indiana.

In late October, Boyd Gaming announced plans to break ground in the spring on a 22-story hotel at Blue Chip Casino. The casino already has an eight-story hotel. The $130 million project is planned to include a spa and fitness center, more event space and new dining and nightlife experiences.

Other details about the hotel - how many rooms, how it will look and how many people it will employ - have not yet been announced.

Certainly a 22-story building would be a runt compared to skyscrapers such as the 108-story Sears Tower and the 100-story John Hancock building in Chicago. But a 22-story building dwarfs the tallest of Michigan City's other non-industrial buildings.

The tallest of those is Dunescape, a lakefront condominium, at 11 stories. The building was designed by G.M. Fedorchak & Associates and was built on the site of the former Mother Goose Village in Sheridan Beach.

Plans for Dunescape were unveiled in 1981, but work on the project was put on hold until 1989. According to News-Dispatch archives, the building was originally going to be nine stories high.

Tied for second place in Michigan City are the Warren Building and the Marquette Mall office building. Both are seven stories tall.

The Warren Building, 717 Franklin St., was built in 1925 by Dr. Frank Warren to house his medical clinic. The building, which contains about 72,000 square feet, has been a hotel, a clinic and home to a variety of professional offices, as well as city hall.

The department store Montgomery Ward at one time occupied the first and second floors until it closed in 1968. The Warren Building has been empty since the early 1990s.

The Marquette Mall office building is the tallest building on the city's south side. Marquette Mall opened Oct. 26, 1967, and the seven-story, 84,000-square-foot office building (which was originally planned to be five stories) was added in 1974.

Even the tallest buildings west of Michigan City in Lake County are smaller than what Blue Chip is proposing.

Merrillville is home to two office buildings, the seven-story Twin Towers and the eight-story Chase Bank Centre.

Gary's industrial heyday after World War I produced a number of towering buildings.

The nine-story Genesis Tower, designed by architect Charles W. Nicol and built in 1926, was formerly known as Hotel Gary. Now called the Genesis Tower apartments, the building sits next to the empty nine-story City Methodist Church.

Gary's Knights of Columbus Building, built in 1926, is 10 stories high. The structure is now used as an apartment building. Designed by Porter & McNally, the building is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The 10-story Gary State Bank Building, now known as the BankOne Building, was also constructed in the late 1920s.

The tallest non-industrial building in Gary, the 14-story, 135-room Sheraton Hotel, opened in 1978, but due to lack of business and economic decline, the hotel went into bankruptcy. At one point the city of Gary paid for the building's utilities. The hotel closed in the mid-1980s.

Like Michigan City's Warren Building, the Sheraton is vacant and deteriorating.

The closest building that would outsize what Blue Chip has planned is the 25-story Chase Tower in South Bend. Also known as City Centre, Chase Tower consists of 10 floors of office space, a 176-room Holiday Inn and a 227-space enclosed parking garage.

In terms of structures that are not occupied buildings, the new hotel will see eye-to-eye with the 72-foot Washington Park Zoo Tower, which is constructed on a 150 foot dune.

Not far away, however, are the city's tallest structures - NIPSCO's 356-foot cooling tower and the power plant's 500-foot smoke stack.