As a CAC member you have access to hundreds of weekly Group Fitness Classes as part of your membership, including dance, yoga, cycle, strength training, boxing and kickboxing, pool classes and so much more. Check out our full list of our corporate partnerships here! Who else when this place opened had a 13-story rooftop that overlooks probably the best view in the city? COVID update: Chicago Athletic Association Hotel - Temp. I wanted to hit a landmark high note from my last job at Alinea. Gym, Pool, Sauna, Breakfast, Restaurant...I am sure I am missing something. Then we had two days of maybe cooking, and then we opened. Rooms are very spacious. What does it mean for the company to have this project on Michigan Avenue, and what are the challenges in that? Head Chromium for fresh and delicious farm-to-table dining at one of the best hotel restaurants in Chicago. PM: I think when Pete, Robert, Cody and I heard specifically about this project, we thought it was pretty cool because, here's this big massive historical building in a kind of stuffy place, or was in the past. 340 reviews of Chicago Athletic Association Hotel - Temp. Stop in for a complete menu of healthy options and indulgent treats. Families Together Cooperative Nursery School, CAC Online Training- Program of the Month. Andrew, when did you come along and what did you think of the project? This one property has so much to offer — if you want this incredible view, and this style of food and this style of drink, you got it, and they execute it very, very well. PC: I think they have to be (more creative in the future). Many of us stayed here, I think I was here for two weeks before I went back home. PC: Game Room — the volume, style of food, and all of the games are all about movement, and not so much a sit-down place. Book Chromium’s private dining room for the ultimate experience. But once we came down and looked at the space, as daunting as the project was, we felt pretty good about it. Even at that point we were opening weird cabinets and finding things that hadn't even been seen yet and that was two years-plus into the renovation. PT: We got Cherry Circle Room seven days before we opened it and then had to build it. PM: It doesn't look like the slow down is happening. We all just took some rooms and worked around the clock, bought clothes down the street. So just by that we knew we were a little short on training or a little short on just living in the space, unpacking things, placing things, everything was a scramble. All Rights Reserved. Parties, weddings, and so much more can be held in our boutique meeting rooms or at our rooftop bar! PT: We had the second floor, and the second floor had a lot of landmark restrictions and requirements but we just kind of knew we had the entirety of the space. Just swing by Chromium’s outdoor window to enjoy some great food and a cold drink. The level of square footage that we operate, implementing four concepts across the space, all the elements are daunting and intimidating at first, but I feel as though after a year we've all got pretty good at handling it. Who has a game room with billiards and shuffleboard and a full bocce court that's all free that you can come here at 12/1 in the morning to play and have fun? As a guest of our Chicago hotel, you are an honorary member of our world-class athletic club. It gave me a chance to do some fun stuff in the Game Room and some more serious stuff, classic cocktails, something I really haven't done in a long time in the Cherry Circle Room, along with some brunch cocktails that I thought were really fun and good. On March 1st of this year, Chicago Athletic Clubs team "The Glass Cutters" participated in the 20th annual Chicago Polar Plunge fundraiser to raise money for Special Olympics Chicago. Can you pinpoint one thing in here that was the most unique or challenging or interesting or hard that you found or unearthed and had to do in this space? It's not the same product anymore, it's changed in the bottle over the last 50 or 60 years. "It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to work in a space that's unparalleled, so we had to go for it.". This is my home away from home. Peter Toalson: Land and Sea was approached in spring of 2013, with the prospect of looking at the project. I think that's a lot of people will use this as the stepping stone on what else is built in the future. In the Game Room, that was a little bit more challenging because it's the biggest room with the smallest bar — it's ironic that the largest bar in the space is in the smallest room, the Cherry Circle Room. EG: There was a brass plaque on the bar for a really long time that said "Pete's Bar" and every time we went by it we were like "It's Pete's!". Enjoy access to an unrivaled experience, including indoor & outdoor lap pools, whirlpools, tennis courts, a Yoga studio, a boxing gym, cycle studio, golf simulators, and 190 group fitness classes throughout every week. The Woman's Athletic Club of Chicago is a private club for women nestled in the heart of downtown Chicago. The Game Room, again historically was used as game rooms, poolrooms, so we developed concepts around that. That's what makes it so great. I think that's where our industry continues to progress and grow. But again it's what we knew and when the green light hit we just came down and we all just worked as hard and fast as we could. PM: I think it's cool because it kind of took on a life of its own. I got everything I could get my hands on, and being able to find more of these older spirits and taste them side by side with the current production was night and day and I said "oh my god. We've got to tweak all these recipes I thought I had for these drinks." We knew it wasn't perfect, but we knew what we could do and we just needed the time to do it. Click the + sign to add a dish to charts on this page or the eye to view its information page. Evanston Chamber of CommerceLincoln Park Chamber of CommerceLakeview Chamber of CommerceLakeview East Chamber of CommerceCentral Lakeview AssociationLincoln Square Chamber of CommerceWest Loop OrganizationWicker Park Bucktown Chamber of CommerceEast Village Association. How does it look for year two and beyond? I think it's a mutual appreciation. The space itself is very large. Chicago’s Premier Sports Resort. EG: I think running the second floor kind of played into our favor because the people that have come inside here are the people seeking us out, and they're seeking the specifically curated experience that we brought to Michigan Avenue. Hosting an event, or just having a large group for dinner? But also having this grand lobby and the Cherry Circle Room. Has there been a lot of synergy with Cindy's? CAC was founded by Chicagoans who value the importance of supporting local businesses, non-profits, schools and the arts. How much did the rooftop (Cindy's) play into the success you've all had here? The menu is consciously crafted with natural, energizing foods to treat the body and mind right. © 2020 Chicago Athletic Clubs. Chef, when you came aboard, how did you start putting together the food in all these spaces? So now we're in the complete opposite problem, it's just trying to find space for what was initially a 80-100 bottle program that's now a 700-800 bottle program and strangely enough still growing. Get menu, photos and location information for Cindy's - Chicago Athletic Association Hotel in Chicago, IL. PC: I think we figured out a lot of what we can and can't do. Is that a thing in Yelp? Our family definitely used the facilities and have enjoyed it immensely! Things like, there's 10 different consommes on the menu, five different ways of cooking a piece of fish (broiled, sautéed, baked, or fried). Head Chromium for fresh and delicious farm-to-table dining at one of the best hotel restaurants in Chicago. That's your dream world is having a guest who's going to come in, sit down (in the Drawing Room), do some work, get out of work on a Friday at 3:00 instead of 5:00, get their last emails written off, have a glass of sparkling wine, go to the Game Room, shoot a round of pool, have a pitcher of beer, then you grab a quick snack and onto Cherry Circle Room where you're going to have a Manhattan, sit down, eat some lamb or a nice kind of steak, then go upstairs and have one last little sip at Cindy's, or get a reservation at Milk Room, where they're going to have some really amazing spirits to kind of settle things. You have like 28 seats at the bar in the Cherry Circle Room, and then you get to the Game Room and it's like you can get 200-250 people into there, easily, and there's only room for three bartenders. Taking a foie paté, how can we do that in our way of doing things now with our spin on it? It spoke to me about the sensibility of the ownership of the hotel, and the management of the hotel and what they want to see in here, which was something a little different than what you would typically see in a hotel. I think throughout a month, to two months to six months to a year now, I think we're pretty much hitting all across the board from the house, service, cocktails to wine. PT: From the start, our partners have been supportive, they have been specific that they wanted Land and Sea to express our vision for the space and we never had to compromise. As far as authenticity what we're doing, everybody can see that it's unique, we're in a very unique space, and so from the start we were always tasked with embracing the uniqueness of the space and just trying to take it and contemporize it, make it great, make it cool. On perhaps Chicago's highest-trafficked locale—on Michigan Avenue across from Millennium Park and the tourist destination The Bean—the slumbering giant Chicago Athletic Association Hotel (opened in 1893 and closed in 2005) awoke one year ago with multiple public spaces: a reimagined restaurant built on original menus from the 1890s (Cherry Circle Room), a raucous bar room with a bocce court and other gaming tables (Game Room), a serene cafe and lobby (Drawing Room), an exclusive ticketed 8-seat rare spirits-driven cocktail bar (Milk Room), a ground-floor Shake Shack, perhaps Chicago's most popular rooftop lounge (Cindy's), all in a gorgeously restored 19th Century time capsule that netted a James Beard Award in 2016. So we obviously knew that the Drawing Room was to act out also as the lobby, so we knew we wanted to put together some programming for that which complemented the lobby but then also helped us transition into the rest of the space. AA: It's still escalating. newsletter, Logan Square Pool Hall Debuts With Safety Measures in Place, $350 PB&J Team’s New Bar Among Chicago Restaurant Openings, Colectivo Coffee Workers Move to Unionize As Company Cancels Chicago Bakery, West Loop Food Hall Politan Row ‘Hibernating’ Until Spring, Lincoln Park’s Lebanese-Mexican Restaurant Runs Out of Food on Opening Day. I think when we first came on, I'm not sure if the operator was decided upon, but we knew what we could handle.