River Point

We recently photographed the river walk and public park at River Point, a 52-story, 1,050,000 square foot office building located along the Chicago River, a project that Epstein served as the civil engineer. River Points 1.5 acre plaza has been dedicated to the City of Chicago as a park and it was built on a platform that spans over the Metra and Amtrak rail lines on a site bordered by the Chicago River and Lake and Canal streets.

Epstein civil engineering responsibilities at River Point included designing the sanitary sewer connections to the City of Chicago public sewer, dual water main services for the building domestic water and fire protection as well as a separate water service to serve the private fire hydrant system for the railroad tunnel under the plaza, storm sewer routing to the Chicago River and the City of Chicago Combined Sewer Overflow outfall culvert. The storm sewer design also included the use of hydrodynamic separators for both the plaza and tower to remove a minimum of 80% total suspended solids prior to the water discharging to the river.

In addition, River Points river walk utilizes a bio-infiltration system using landscaped areas to filter stormwater that is detained in an underground aggregate detention system prior to its discharge to the river. Stormwater from the plaza is collected and routed to a cistern where it is re-used as irrigation water and stormwater from the tower is collected into a detention vault where it is also re-used as irrigation water for the green roof and landscaped areas.

Epstein was responsible for designing the stormwater connections to the river wall and for locating and coordinating the design of 570 feet of new river wall along the entire project frontage. Epstein obtained permits for the river wall construction and the stormwater connections from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, and the City of Chicago Department of Sewers and Department of Transportation.

The project also included coordination with Amtrak for construction over the rail lines that spans 150 feet.

Lastly, Pickard Chilton Architects of New Haven, CT were the design architects, The Office of James Burnett was the landscape architect and the project was developed by the team of the Houston-based Hines, local developer Larry Levy and the Montreal-based Ivanhoe Cambridge.