J. Paul Beitler is president of the Chicago-based developer The Beitler Company. One of Chicago's leading real estate development companies, the Beitler Company has built several major skyscrapers and in 1989 released plans for the Miglin-Beitler Skyneedle, also known as the Skyneedle, which would have been the world's tallest building.

The following conversation took place between J. Paul Beitler and Emporis.com's Marshall Gerometta and Daniel Kieckhefer, in Mr. Beitler's office at One North LaSalle Street. Mr. Gerometta and Mr. Kieckhefer are both executive members of the Emporis Data Committee.

Mr. Beitler, today (2002) the Petronas Towers are the tallest buildings in the world, and they were built by a team of engineers and architects that you had assembled earlier to design a different structure, the Miglin-Beitler Tower in Chicago. What were the innovations of this design, and what influence did they have on the engineering of Petronas and other tall buildings? When we designed the Miglin-Beitler Skyneedle we had to determine how to create a structure that would accommodate this design, because at that time all tall buildings had been built out of steel. With a steel frame you were always up against the physics of a height-to-width ratio; every four feet you built up, you had to go out one foot. So if you look at the Sears Tower, that's a classic design with a base [from one corner to its opposite] roughly ¼ of its height. For the Miglin-Beitler Tower we changed the dynamics of the height-to-width ratio and designed a building so narrow that people said to us, "How in the world could you do such a narrow building?" And the concept of this narrow building really came out of the design by Helmut Jahn of the MesseTurm in Frankfurt. That was an exceedingly well-accepted building in Germany and was very successful, so we knew that small floor plates could work but we had to find a way to do it structurally. We retained the services of Charlie Thornton of Thornton Tomasetti, Inc., and together we came up with a structural design out of concrete using what we called super-columns, which were these massive 16-foot by 8-foot columns that ran in pairs up each side of the tower and took the building's load from the center core to the outside perimeter and carried it all the way up to the top. This was a very rigid system, and it was an integral part of the design which was actually exposed in certain areas.		J. Paul Beitler
The next question that came up concerned the sway of the building - won't it topple over? Well, two things: First, concrete weighs about 30 pounds per square foot and steel weighs about 9 pounds per square foot, so it's much heavier and much more massive. That meant that there was tremendous download, so there was virtually no uplift on the building. And we didn't have to put our caissons as deep because there was no toppling-over effect from the wind. The second thing was the material's velocity. The rule of thumb is that steel bends in the wind at a speed which causes a deflection equal to the height of the building divided by 500. So in the case of Sears, the deflection would be 1500 feet divided by 500 for a total of 3 feet: three feet in one direction and three in the other direction, so the total swing of the Sears Tower is about 6 feet on a windy day. That in and of itself isn't a problem, the problem is that steel has memory and wants to return to its original position. But it ends up swinging past its original position, and you get this oscillation at the top of the building. It's a phenomenon that occurs today. If you go to the top floors you'll see the water in the toilet bowl swishing back and forth, and people who are prone to seasickness generally go home for the afternoon. In a concrete building the formula is the same except that the deflection is about half. It's equal to the height of the building divided by 900. So by using concrete we were able to dampen the speed of the building so significantly that really sway was not a factor.		Miglin-Beitler Tower

How did the idea of the Miglin-Beitler Tower evolve, and how did you get approval for it? When Lee Miglin and I decided to build another tall building in Chicago, we turned to Cesar Pelli and said, "We have this wonderful site that's two acres located in the heart of the city. How tall of a building can we build?" They went to the drawing board and designed a building, and we went to New Haven, Connecticut and as most architects do they had a fantastic unveiling to overwhelm you with the beauty of their design. They said, "Wait till you see what we have," and they unveiled this magnificent building, and the first words out of their mouth were, "and do you know this will be the third-tallest building in the world?" And it was as though you could drop a pin... not for excitement, but for being underwhelmed, to put it mildly. Lee looked at me and I looked at him, and we said in unison, "How wonderful. We'll be known as the developers who did the third-tallest building in the world??!!" Then we said, "If we're going to push the envelope that far, why don't we do the tallest building in the world! What will it take to do that?" So that began the journey, and the journey went in several directions. First of all, what are the requirements for being the tallest building in the world; how do you measure that? Until that point in time there really was no standard for determining the world's tallest building. Then secondly, how do you design a structure to support the world's tallest building? All very tall buildings had been steel, but the concrete industry was very quickly producing a product stronger than steel that would move at half the speed of steel in a wind, so its dampening agents were very redeeming. And then thirdly, where could you go to build such a building given the zoning in the various metropolitan areas? And then I guess you could say as a fourth adjunct, who would occupy the building? You would have to put it in an environment where a very tall building would be accepted by the populace, and also where there is demand for it so you don't get a situation where people point and say "Isn't that lovely!" but the developer's broke. So let's start off with the first point, the standard by which tall buildings were measured. At that point in time there was no standard. So the question became, how do you measure the top of a building? Do you measure it from the very top structural part of the building with no add-ons like antennas and decorative features? Do you measure it to the highest floor occupied by humans, or do you go to the very top of the building where there is an antenna or mast, and say the mast is the top of the building? Well, we really struggled with this, it was a very, very difficult thing. And finally we ended up going to the World Congress on Tall Buildings in Amsterdam, I believe it was in 1990-91, and at that meeting this very question was put to the vote of the members. And it was decided that the height of a building would be determined according to the architect's intent in designing any structures above human occupied floors. And later on when Cesar Pelli designed the Petronas Towers, where the spires on top are really decorative in nature and not occupied by people, his design was based on the decisions made by the World Congress. So today you have a kind of catfight going on between Malaysia and the United States over who has the world's tallest building. And of course the people in the Sears structure claim, "We have the world's tallest building because we have occupiable floors that are higher than the occupiable floors in the Petronas Towers", and the Petronas Towers people say, "Well according to the rules we have the world's tallest building." So it's still up for grabs. My hope is to do the world's tallest building to such a height that there is no question or squabble about how tall the building is. And that's how we designed the Miglin-Beitler Tower, because at 2,000 feet we were clearly 500 feet above Sears, and the occupiable space in this building would have been above everything including the Petronas Towers and CN Tower in Toronto. So it was very, very exciting.

J. Paul Beitler and a model of the Miglin-Beitler Skyneedle

The Chrysler Building and several older skyscrapers have always measured their height all the way to the top of the spire. Was tradition part of the consideration in determining the rules? Tradition was part of it, and politicking was part of it. As you can imagine, the people from New York were stressing the fact that the Empire State Building had never been designed with the masthead that it currently has. That tower was originally put on the building so that they could tie dirigibles up there at nighttime and they could swing around the masthead. I don't know if the building could have maintained that structurally, but it was interesting to learn that that was never really an integral part of that building. The same thing went for other buildings with tall antennas, including the John Hancock Center and Sears Tower. So while tradition played a part in it, politics played a larger part. And finally it was decided that to be as pure as possible, a building would only be measured up to where its architects had intended the design to go. Any add-on would simply be a cheap way of lifting the height of the building, and it was discarded.

The other half of measuring a building is deciding the correct base from which to start the measurement. And in cities like Hong Kong and Seattle with hilly ground there could be a lot of ambiguity in determining the height. What standards are in place to decide what counts as the base in a height calculation? Three letters: AGL - Above Ground Level. So the base of the building has to be above ground level, and putting it on top of a hill to elevate it might do wonders for you from the standpoint of disguising what it is you're attempting to do, but for purposes of measuring the building it's from the base of the building, wherever it meets the ground, to the top of the building.

Sometimes a skyscraper is built so that one side is higher than another, and the highest portion may be in the center of the block. For instance, the Sears Tower would be 4 feet taller if you measured it from Franklin Street instead of Wacker Drive. Do you take the higher side, the lower side, or just go with the main entrance? You measure only the height of the building irrespective of the ground level, it's actually the height where the base of the building meets the ground, and if the base is uneven, I think that's a technicality. I think that one limitation we currently have in the United States is not a technical limitation, it is a political limitation, because in this country we're not allowed to build anything higher than 2,000 feet above the ground. The reason is that above that space you get into the air corridors of our commercial flight paths. It takes an act of Congress to penetrate that space, and we have been told on more than one occasion that they will not permit that, especially in a large metropolitan area with several huge airports. So 2,000 feet in America is as tall as we can go, and when we had designed our building, the Miglin-Beitler Tower, it would have been 1,999 feet and 11 inches. We didn't go the full 12 inches because buildings expand and grow with temperature changes, and we thought we would end up inadvertently penetrating the 2,000-foot height limitation. And yes, I think it's safe to say that the building may have grown more than one inch, but by giving up the inch we met the legal technicality of trying to provide for that error of construction.

J. Paul Beitler in his office

How are building heights legally enforced? Do the authorities just look at the blueprints, or do they also make some kind of direct measurement? Both ways. One, by the permit process: When you go in for permits of course the structure has to be approved by the local officials, and because of the height requirements of the FAA, you have to get their sign-off to do this. As a matter of fact, here in Chicago when we initially sought approval to do the Tower, we came to discover that it was in the flight path of the approach corridor for Runway 22 at Midway Airport. And as a consequence they denied us a permit. So we had to go back to Washington, and we spent two years working with Congressman Lipinski getting an entirely new approach into Midway for commercial aircraft so that instead of flying over the top of Chicago they would make their approach through the southeast corridor of the city following what is called a "bent approach" into Midway. And of course this was immensely facilitated by the GPS approach system we now have. But at the time, Congressman Lipinski had just arranged for a microwave approach into Runway 22. This is a straight beam that comes up, and airplanes can intercept the beam and fly the beam down. Ultimately Mayor Daley stepped in at the 11th hour and said, "I don't care whether it's a bent approach, a microwave approach, or a GPS approach. My approach is, no commercial airliners are going to fly over the top of my city. And the FAA is not going to determine whether I can grant permission for a tall building or not." And that's what happened. They relented, and two years later they gave us a permit to build the world's tallest building.

So the mayor was very supportive of the Miglin-Beitler Tower? Yes, he was.

Your record of projects includes the tallest building in Chicago's suburbs, and 12 years ago you came very close to building the world's tallest building. Obviously you've had some success with zoning obstacles. How do you account for this? Zoning is a guideline by which a community sends out a general outline of what it would like to see built and not built. It's not an outline cast in concrete - it's merely that, an outline. So what I have found is that most communities are very approachable if you can go to them and show them why you believe that a variance is in their long-term best interests. Generally speaking, in each of the communities where I have sought permission to do a tall building, they have seen the benefits, such as the conservation of land (so instead of spreading a building over the ground you have a tall narrow building surrounded by large green areas that can be parks for people to enjoy), or enhancing the revenue base of a small community, or providing competitively better views so that corporations can have more prestigious space. Remember that in a city like Chicago, our views don't start at ground level. Because we have so many tall buildings, our skyline begins at 50 stories. So when they built the Sears Tower, interestingly Sears took the first 50 floors for their own occupancy and then leased the other 50 floors above them. And of course, the views were spectacular. So generally speaking I find that communities are open to variances in zoning provided you can give them qualified reasons for wanting those variances. For a tall building in the city we know that the zoning rules will give you the height if you include setbacks. So if you look at the design for the Miglin-Beitler Tower you'll see that its series of setbacks gave it a very large floor-to-area ratio (F.A.R.), which determines the height of the building allowed in a particular area.

Miglin-Beitler Tower

How difficult is it to get zoning for a tall building in the suburbs? I don't think it's easy anywhere. I think that everywhere you go, generally speaking the first words you hear are "no" and then you have to work backwards to get to a "yes". But ultimately it is a negotiation between the parties, and I think that if you approach it in a spirit of good faith, and you look upon it as a partnership with the community rather than an opportunity to take advantage of it for your own self-enrichment, in most instances the community cooperates. I've never had a problem with zoning because I try to give back to the community those things that the community believes I am taking from it by having a tall building.

The Beitler Company's projects have usually involved star architects like Bruce Graham, Helmut Jahn, Cesar Pelli, and Ricardo Bofill. How do you like to select an architect? I like to find people who are at the top of their creative field. I believe that architects are like artists; each one has his own brand of architecture, each one paints a picture in a different way. So for me, it's been fun to select different architects for different looks and different locations, depending on my feeling for the kind of architecture that's needed. For instance, we selected Cesar Pelli & Associates Architects because he was one of the greatest architects that had never been to Chicago. The first building we did with Cesar was 181 West Madison, which was the Midwest headquarters for Paine Webber and later the Northern Trust Company. It was from that experience that we decided to continue in the same architectural palette and develop the sister building across the street, which would have been the world's tallest building. That was the first time that we've ever used an architect twice. Generally speaking we don't. We like to move around to the various architects so that there's a variety in the city, and we bring the very best architects to the city especially if they're not here already. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP was an entirely different story. For Madison Plaza we wanted to have an architect who was from Chicago; we needed a firm who had the best engineering department from an architectural standpoint, so we went to Bruce Graham mainly for the sake of the building's structural requirements and the integrity of Skidmore's engineering team. When we built the tallest building in Chicago's suburbs [ Oakbrook Terrace Tower] in Oakbrook Terrace, we wanted to have an all-glass façade, and Murphy/Jahn, Inc. Architects is the foremost architect in glass façades. The glass had to look like stone at certain points, like glass in other parts, and at some points it had to be clear, so Helmut Jahn was the obvious choice.		Oakbrook Terrace Tower
Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura, from Spain, is one of the most dynamic and disciplined architects I've met. He loves to combine neoclassic architecture with modern architecture. So you get this wonderful romantic blend between those two schools that is very distinctive. And while Ricardo had already done R.R. Donnelley Building here in Chicago, at Citadel Center we gave him free rein to mix the two and move away from the neoclassic school, leaving just touches of classicism and bringing in a more modern approach. For the Chicago Bar Association Building I used Tigerman McCurry Architects because of his ability to design jewel box structures in unusual locations. At Presidents Plaza and Triangle Plaza we used Shaw & Associates for the geometrics that they were known for. If you look at the geometry of these buildings by O'Hare, you'll find that some of the buildings are triangles, some are parallelograms with the corners lopped off, and some are trapezoidal. And that's what we loved about Pat Shaw, that he loved to design buildings in various unusual geometric shapes.

What firms would you like to work with in the future? Well, clearly I want to go with firms that I haven't worked with before. I strongly believe that for a beautiful building to occur, it has to be a collaboration between the architect, the ultimate end user, and the developer; so it has to be someone that is flexible and highly collaborative. So I'm completely open, I'm looking for that hungry next star that hasn't yet risen above the horizon.

What are the Beitler Company's objectives in its current project at Citadel Center, and how is the development different from the office buildings you worked on during the boom years of the 1980's? With Dearborn Center we decided to change the way office buildings were being built. If you think about it, Dearborn Center was one of the first new office buildings built in the Loop since 1990. And across that interval, technology in all fields of business had changed dramatically. The computer used to fill a whole office, and today you can put it in your hand. The problem was that so little of the new technology had been put into office buildings yet. We found that many of the products that go into offices, like machinery and furniture, had to be redesigned to be compatible with office spaces that were not well equipped to serve the business community. So Prime Group Realty Trust chairman Mike Reschke and I decided that we would change that, and incorporate into Dearborn Center as many features that had evolved over the past 10 years as possible. One of the first things we did, and really we're on the leading edge of it, was to design a building that not only has a 14-inch raised floor to make room for all of the telephone wiring and electrical conduits so you can move plugs instead of people, but we also put the heating, ventilating and air conditioning under the floor so that there are no ducts in the building. This meant that businesses could basically have a blank sheet of paper in terms of reconfiguring themselves in a very short period of time and in an inexpensive way. You can run walls to the ceiling and move them in an hour without having to worry about moving ductwork around, and still have all the air you want. So Dearborn Center really, aside from being an absolutely exquisite shell of a building, is equally impressive inside with the technology that it has. We also decided that we shoud provide near-limitless electrical capability within the building. We used to say that if we could provide 3 watts per square foot that was fantastic. Then we moved to 5 watts per square foot. Interestingly, with Dearborn Center I think the lowest number is 10 watts per square foot, and there isn't a company in the city of Chicago that uses more than 7 watts per square foot. So the building has virtually limitless power. Those were the things we wanted to incorporate in the building that had never been done before. I think I could say to you that as the developer, the challenge is not necessarily to be the tallest, the biggest, the richest. I like instead to go where there is no path and leave a trail. And that is the excitement of real development. It's pioneering, it's getting out there and taking things to their next technical, structural, and logical place.

J. Paul Beitler

What became of the City of Chicago's request for a major transit station under Dearborn Center? That request is in limbo right now. It's one of those absolutely fantastic ideas that was really spawned by the mayor, and it's an idea that I hope someday will come to fruition. The idea was inspired by Dearborn Center's location between the subway line that goes to O'Hare and the main north-south line. So it would provide a perfect midpoint for passengers to check their luggage, to get their tickets, and to travel on the CTA by rapid transit to each of the airports. So what we did was to build the lower level of the building with punch-outs so that if the city ever wants to move ahead and build a super-station, all the infrastructure is in place to do it.

What was your experience working for Arthur Rubloff & Company, and what did you and Lee Miglin learn from it? Arthur Rubloff was a wildcatter in this industry. He was a man who ultimately had a reputation as a visionary. And the fact of the matter was that Arthur Rubloff was a very bold-thinking individual who would think of the most outrageous ideas possible for that particular time and then throw them out there, so all of a sudden people would say, "What a visionary idea!" And he would do these broad sweeping kinds of things and say, for example, "I believe that we should have the Magnificent Mile." And so North Michigan Avenue became the Magnificent Mile; it was a name that he coined which really stuck. And at one point in his career he said, "I believe that you should take strip shopping centers and put them under one roof and call it a Shopping Mall." And he created the first shopping mall of this type in America, which was Evergreen Plaza. This man was absolutely out there because he would throw these enormous challenges to the public and then he would take the responsibility of executing those challenges. Unfortunately, late in his life he became more rigid and lost the balance of compromise that he had in his younger years, and that made it difficult for some people to work with him. What we learned from that was to maintain that sense of compromise and remember to keep listening and collaborating, or you wall yourself off from too many good projects, people and ideas.

What do you believe that tenants are looking for today in office space? Decision makers in business today are not afraid of making choices about moving to an office building, or about the size or location of a building. Their fear is that whatever decision they make, it will be obsolete in six months. It's the same fear you face when you buy a computer. How long will this computer be at the top of the market before something else replaces it? The challenge that we developers have today is to be able to provide a building that is flexible enough to minimize that risk for the managers. Remember, most middle managers are paid on a bonus system. So if it's expensive to move walls around and make the changes necessary to compete in a very fast global marketplace, they will avoid doing it to preserve their bonus. And that hurts the company. Conversely, if a building is built so that its design and configuration can be changed overnight, then it can meet the challenges of a business for a fraction of the normal cost. This puts the managers in a position where they're not afraid to risk and to dare, and to get out there and compete. That's the challenge we have, and that's what's going to have to happen with the development of buildings going into the future. Buildings are no longer static forts. They're now spaceships that fly across a global network called the Internet, and take masses of people on a 24/7 basis to compete and to go to battle, and then retreat with their rewards. And the faster and better that ship is, the more successful their victories will be.

Models of the Beitler Company's buildings

You described the innovations being used in Dearborn Center. What are the next steps in the evolution of the office building? The next steps will be communication, and creating settings for wireless environments; settings in which people can be multi-tasked but not burdened. Something that's very troubling in business today is that given all of the computer technology we have and the tools that supposedly make our working world more effective and more efficient, we're working longer hours with less productivity than our parents did during the 40's. We have less time for vacations, less personal time. If anything, we have more impositions upon our time with the fax machine, the computer, the telephone, the pager, so what we need is to find ways to communicate and multi-task without putting the burden on an individual beyond what it currently is.

Can a new office building be competitive even in a bad market? Yes, it can be. The unfortunate thing is that rental rates are predicated upon cost. And so one has to look at the ingredients that make up the cost of a building to determine whether or not the building ultimately can be competitive. The lower the land cost, the lower the interest rate, and the lower the construction cost - the lower the rent. It's as simple as that. But I would say this: There isn't a building today that isn't eventually filled, that isn't successful at some point in its lifetime. It's just the amount of time that it takes to get there. I've been fortunate, my buildings are successful while I own them as opposed to being successful only when somebody else owns them.

J. Paul Beitler

Do you believe that the attack on the World Trade Center will permanently change people's outlook on tall buildings? I've been asked the question, as a result of 9/11, will we ever see any more tall buildings built in the world or in the United States? And I would say that the answer is yes, we will. While we know from statistics and from post-traumatic interviews that 20% of the workforce today says they will not work in a tall building, I believe that Americans are quick to forgive and they're quick to forget. In a year or two from now, this passing fear that people have will be gone. One of the biggest misunderstandings that has come out of 9/11 is the idea that the World Trade Center was a target because it was a tall building, rather than because it was a symbol. It was a symbol of commerce, it was a symbol of world economic dominance, and we were attacked for a philosophy and a belief, not because the World Trade Center was a tall building. Yet unfortunately what has happened is a reaction, what I would call a knee-jerk reaction, on the part of owners and property managers around the United States, running in fear that any tall building is now a target. I would emphasize that prior to 9/11 and following 9/11 there were no attacks on office buildings anywhere in the United States that were to hurt the building. Both the Okalahoma City tragedy and the previous bombing of the World Trade Center demonstrate efforts to cause damage to a symbol of an ideology or a system, like the U.S. Government. Neither was perpetrated against a building per se. So yes, I believe that there will be tall buildings, I believe that tall buildings will play an integral part in our society, especially in Chicago where tall buildings are already a major part of our culture and society.

Can you tell us anything about the projects that you're planning to work on after Dearborn Center? Yes. I have a dream. I've had this dream ever since I was a little boy. And that dream is to build the world's tallest building. Why? For one simple reason: there can only be one world's tallest building. And I want to build it. And so far, no one has gotten to the 2,000 foot mark yet. So there's still hope, there's still opportunity. And as long as that hope exists, and I exist, you'd better watch the horizon.

Marshall Gerometta (left) and J. Paul Beitler (right)

What will it look like? I envision it to be very similar to the tower that we designed. It will be very tall and narrow, and it will be very functional. It will be slender and sleek, it will be an icon, it will be something that people look at. It will be not only a symbol of the can-do spirit, it will be a symbol of our culture. If you think about it, through the ages there is no other icon that man has turned to as a touchstone for culture as much as architecture. We look to the Pyramid of Khufu; we look to the Tour Eiffel; we look to the Empire State Building. If you look at any advertisement showing a skyline, you will recognize the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco, the rounded top of the Wells Fargo Center, the Chrysler Building in New York, or the Sears Tower, and John Hancock Center in Chicago. So these massive icons are really such an integral part of our culture that it's inconceivable to me that we won't continue to create them.

Thank you very much for this conversation.

Interview by Daniel Kieckhefer and Marshall Gerometta (September 2002)

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