Chicago ? It would twist into the sky over Chicago’s lakefront like an oversized birthday candle, surpassing Sears Tower and the planned Freedom Tower in New York as the nation’s tallest building.

It might, or might not, be built. But it already is drawing fire from Donald Trump, who scaled back his plans for a record-shattering Chicago tower of comparable height after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

A far less well known developer, Christopher Carley of Chicago, will unveil his proposal today for a slender, 115-story tower with a steel spire that could soar higher than 2,000 feet.

Designed by superstar Spanish-born architect and engineer Santiago Calatrava, the skyscraper would rise next to Lake Shore Drive and near the entrance to Navy Pier. Its tapering glass facade would ripple like folds of drapery.

For Carley, the chairman of Fordham Co., the planned hotel and condo tower would be taller than the combined height of his last three previous projects: two towers of roughly 50 stories and an eight-story structure.

Financing for his latest project has not yet been arranged, and largely would depend on achieving prices rarely seen in a downtown market.

“Is this going to get done?” Carley said. “It’ll be market-driven.”

But the ambitious proposal, to be called Fordham Spire, would dramatically shift the focus of Chicago’s skyline. It also faces likely community opposition and the challenge of obtaining financing in what some are calling an overheated real estate market.

Trump: Backing ‘insane’

In addition, some contend, it must confront the specter of terrorism.

An artist rendering, provided by Fordham Co., shows a proposed 115-story skyscraper along the Chicago lakefront. The building, designed by Santiago Calatrava, could give Chicago claim to having the tallest skyscraper in the country. The proposed 2,000-foot tower would be taller than the 110-story Sears Tower, which currently is the nation's tallest skyscraper. Seen in the the foreground is the Navy Pier.

“In this climate,” said Trump, whose tower might compete with the new skyscraper for luxury condominium buyers, “I would not want to build that building. Nor would I want to live in that building.

“Any bank that would put up money to build a building like that would be insane.”

Carley shot back that Trump’s Chicago tower – now under construction – is playing in the same supertall league because it will be 1,360 feet tall, just 90 feet less than Sears.

“I wonder where the insanity limit is,” he said. “It must be just over 1,360 feet.”

The verbal jousting suggests that Fordham Spire offers a test of whether the nation’s post-Sept. 11 fear of heights is easing, nearly four years after hijacked jetliners crashed into the World Trade Center. Some experts say they see less fear on the skyline.

“I remember after 9-11 a lot of people announcing the end of the skyscraper,” said Ron Klemencic, chairman of the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, which monitors skyscraper construction worldwide. Now, he said, “the aversion to building tall … has diminished.”

Carley has been working with Calatrava – the architect of the bird-like Milwaukee Art Museum addition, the Athens Olympics sports complex and the planned transportation center at Ground Zero in New York – to design a tower on at least one of two sites along the west side of Lake Shore Drive and the north bank of the Chicago River.

Curves and concrete

Under Carley’s plan, those sites would be combined into a single 2.2-acre parcel – and area that now is an unruly patch, filled with overgrown grass, gravel, trees and a construction trailer.

From it would sprout a tower utterly different from the boxy forms found elsewhere on the Chicago skyline: A skyscraper with gently curving, concave outer walls attached to a massive reinforced concrete core.

Each floor would rotate a little more than 2 degrees from the one below. The floors would turn 270 degrees around the core as they rise, making the building appear to twist.

A spire above would soar to roughly 2,000 feet, making Fordham Spire taller than the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, scheduled for completion in 2010, but not as tall as a tower now being built in the United Arab Emirates.

Called the Burj Dubai and designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill of Chicago, that behemoth is expected to reach to about 2,300 feet – the actual height is a closely guarded secret – and become the world’s tallest building when it is finished in late 2008.

Currently, the world’s tallest building is the Taipei 101 in Taiwan, a 101-story structure that rises about 1,670 feet.

Calatrava denied that topping the 1,450-foot Sears Tower was his, or the developer’s, objective. He contended the Fordham Spire’s height reflected his search for ideal proportions.

The goal “is not the highest, or the widest, but a building that wants to be special, a step beyond,” he said in an interview from his Zurich office.

Carley added: “If I had my druthers, I’d like to have Sears retain the title. If Santiago thinks it’s essential, fine.”

Casting a thin shadow

Carley and Calatrava noted that the skyscraper’s thin profile – it would have just 920,000 total square feet, compared with 4.5 million for Sears Tower – would make it a benign, not overbearing, presence along the city’s lakefront.

That is far better, they maintain, than two towers of roughly 50 and 35 stories, which current zoning allows. Towers of that size would be far more bulky and cast greater shadows, the developer and architect argue.

“The tower is without any doubt tall, but it is not big. It is very slender. It is extremely slender,” Calatrava said.

At City Hall, reaction to the project was guarded.

“We saw the plan and we’ll consider it,” said Connie Buscemi, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Planning and Development.

Besides the political hurdles, Carley must confront history, which shows that it is easy to unveil plans for a super-tall tower but far harder to get one built.

Since the 110-story Sears Tower was built in 1974, several developers have floated plans for supertall towers in Chicago, including the 125-story Miglin-Beitler Tower in 1989 and the 112-story 7 S. Dearborn project in 1999.

Yet only Trump actually has gotten such a project under way. His 92-story hotel and condo tower is now under construction along the Chicago River.