The Burnham Hotel at the Reliance Building is a 122-room “boutique” ù hotel in an adaptive use of an architecturally significant building in the heart of Chicago’s downtown. The Reliance Building, reflecting downtown Chicago’s office market in the 1980s, had slipped into disrepair. In order to protect a treasured landmark, the city purchased the building and quickly stabilized it by restoring the exterior. The city then issued a request for proposals (RFP) and awarded a contract to the winning development team, headed by the locally based McCaffery Interests, on the basis of the team’s proposal to convert the office building into a hotel. The development scheme included the reconstruction of the interior to complement the architectural grandeur of the historic building.