Dublin property developer Garrett Kelleher has embarked on a charm offensive in Chicago to win support for his ambitious "Chicago Spire" spiralling tower project before the city's planners decide whether to sanction the 160-storey skyscraper. Arthur Beesley, Senior Business Correspondent, reports.

Billed as the tallest building in the US, the project will come before the Chicago planning commission on April 19th. It will decide whether the project can go ahead, but Chicago's mayor, Richard Daley, must sign off on it before work can proceed.

The cost of the 2,000-foot high project at the mouth of the Chicago River on the banks of Lake Michigan has been estimated at $1.2 - $2 billion (€900 million - €1.5 billion). The architect is Santiago Calatrava, designer of the James Joyce Bridge in Dublin.

In advance of the planning hearing next month, Mr Kelleher this week spoke at public meetings at which hundreds of Chicago residents and interest groups were present. Mr Kelleher, who has given interviews to Chicago newspapers recently, declined yesterday to discuss the project with The Irish Times.

Certain media in Chicago have expressed surprise that Anglo Irish Bank, which is to arrange financing for the project, is supporting it without a requirement that Mr Kelleher pre-sells some of the 1,300 apartment units in the tower before building begins.

Instead, Mr Kelleher and his vehicle, Shelbourne Development, will finance the initial construction work, set to start in May, until apartments go on the market in the autumn. "That's highly unusual in commercial finance," noted the Chicago Sun-Times.

"It's more unusual in American terms but it's not in European terms," said a spokeswoman for Mr Kelleher.

It is unclear how much money Mr Kelleher and Shelbourne will provide upfront for the first phase of construction. They are likely to take up 20-25 per cent of the equity in the project, with a bank consortium led by Anglo providing the remainder in debt.

"I've never failed to raise equity or senior debt for a project . . . I'm funding all the soft costs and the early construction costs out of my own resources," Mr Kelleher told the Sun-Times. "I'm risking a significant portion of my net worth on this project . . . But if this project tanks, it's not going to knock me out of the game by any stretch of the imagination."

Mr Kelleher told the paper he could be worth more than $750 million "on a good day".