Project Team
Landscape Architect: Greenprint Partners
Developer & General Contractor: Bluestar Properties
Developer: R2 Properties
Architect: Lamar Johnson Collaborative
Civil Engineer: V3
Located along the North Branch of the Chicago River and adjacent to Goose Island, the Morton Salt warehouse with its iconic sign has been a recognizable landmark for Chicago residents and visitors for nearly a century. After the Chicago-based manufacturer shuttered its salt storage and packing activities at the facility in 2015, the property was sold and plans were made to convert it into a mixed-use development including indoor and waterfront music venues, retail, and office space. Completed in 2023, the adaptive reuse development now called the Salt District, envisions the historic locale as a mixed-use destination that takes great advantage of its proximity to the river’s edge.
The project reflects smart development encouraged by zoning changes passed by the Chicago City Council to allow non-manufacturing uses along the former industrial zone of the Chicago River’s North Branch. New technical updates informed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Chicago District respect ongoing industrial uses while enhancing the natural environment and providing public access and recreational opportunities.
Unknown to the average concertgoer, the Salt District has created a new paradigm for brownfield remediation and stormwater management. It represents the first time the City of Chicago employed innovative stormwater soils, creating a groundbreaking, decentralized green infrastructure solution to alleviate combined sewer overflow.
The project site demanded an innovative design to provide multi-functional and cost-effective solutions that simultaneously remediate industrial site contamination, provide effective stormwater management, and create an immersive nature experience while also adhering to a strict budget.
The design objective at The Salt Shed was to transform a constrained, contaminated industrial site into a vibrant public landscape while solving its stormwater requirements without disturbing the existing environmental cap or sacrificing valuable outdoor space. The 4.2-acre site sits along the Chicago River and was being adaptively reused as a major public entertainment destination. The landscape therefore needed to perform as infrastructure while also supporting the site's new identity as a public gathering place and reconnecting people with the river.
The design process began with the fundamental constraints of the site: contaminated soils beneath an engineered barrier, limited available space, proximity to the Chicago River, and a requirement to detain more than 13,000 cubic feet of stormwater during a major storm event. Rather than pursuing a conventional “pipe-it-out” approach with underground detention infrastructure, the project team explored whether the landscape itself could provide the required capacity. Third-party laboratory testing of the growth media was provided to the Chicago Department of Buildings to establish its suitability, while the civil engineer determined how much media could be placed and graded across the site.
This collaborative process revealed an opportunity to use the site's unusual geometry to its advantage. Concentrating growth media in the site’s lowest elevations and at greater depths where they could provide the most stormwater storage allowed the team to reduce the overall landscape footprint while maintaining—and ultimately exceeding—the required detention volume. This was particularly important to ownership because it maximized space available for concerts and other public events.
The resulting landscape was designed to work with, rather than conceal, the site's industrial history. Existing architectural and infrastructural elements were retained, while the new landscape establishes a naturalistic, riparian character along the river. The planting palette emphasizes species native to the region, including oaks, willows, aspens, prairie grasses, sedges, flowering perennials, shrubs, and plants selected to support native pollinators and birds. The continuously planted river edge creates habitat while providing a visible connection between the public riverwalk and the water.
The process brought together development, landscape architecture, civil engineering, environmental expertise, municipal review, and specialized green-infrastructure knowledge. The result is a landscape in which stormwater infrastructure, habitat, public space, and adaptive reuse are inseparable. The Salt Shed demonstrates that on a contaminated urban site, environmental constraints can become design opportunities—and that high-performing infrastructure can simultaneously restore ecological function and create a memorable public landscape.
