Construction is about to begin near the top of the former John Hancock Center on Chicago’s first multilevel observation deck. Workers have spent the past year stripping out everything on the 95th and 96th floors — the former home of the legendary Signature Room restaurant and the Signature Lounge — leaving nothing of the interior but bare concrete floors and exposed steel beams.
The Magnificent Mile still has a lot of empty storefronts, but Nichole Benolken, managing director at 360 Chicago, the observation deck on the 94th floor, said this reconstruction effort will provide the retail district with a jolt of energy.
“We feel confident that the experience we deliver to Chicago will boost tourism,” she said. “The space won’t look anything like it did beforehand.”
Glass installers on Wednesday morning were suspended more than 1,000 feet above East Delaware Place on the building’s north side, popping out now-dingy windows that had been in place since 1969. The hundreds of replacement windows will reduce glare, brighten the interior, save energy and provide tourists with a much clearer view of Lake Michigan and the surrounding city.
“Window technology has come a long way in six decades,” Benolken said. “Replacing the windows is the final step of this first phase.”
Magnicity, the French company that owns 360 Chicago, bought the 95th and 96th floors in 2024 after the abrupt closure of the Signature Room and the Signature Lounge, top tourist spots for decades. The company will by mid-2027 expand the existing 94th-floor observation deck up to the 95th floor, add a three-story atrium and fill the 96th floor with a 14,000-square-foot private event space.
Matthew Baran, center, holds a new window pane with Kevin Callahan during a window install in the former John Hancock Center at 875 N. Michigan Ave., on April 8, 2026. (Josh Boland/Chicago Tribune)
The Signature Room and Signature Lounge closed in September 2023. The shutdown of the venues was a blow to the Magnificent Mile, where the retail vacancy rate soared as a result of online shopping trends and the pandemic. A message posted on the restaurant’s social media pages cited COVID-19 and subsequent “severe economic hardship.”
Magnicity invested about $17 million into the former John Hancock Center, the skyscraper now known as 875 North Michigan Avenue, after buying the 94th floor more than 11 years ago. It added attractions such as Tilt, a moving glass ledge that for two minutes dangles guests more than 1,000 feet above the street, and CloudBar, the highest bar in Chicago. Nearly 1 million people visit the observation deck each year.
A new bar will be added to the 95th floor by mid-2027, Benolken said.
The three-floor reconstruction is the most significant interior renovation in the building’s 57-year history, according to SOM, the architectural firm that designed the 100-story 875 North Michigan Avenue.