R.I.P. Marquis Tower?

A 24-year-old’s dream for a twisting downtown apartment tower has run into a brick wall. Jaron Garrett couldn’t raise enough money to exercise contracts on the run-down properties he had hoped to redevelop. His contracts have expired and the buildings are back on the market for sale. Garrett said today that he’s still interested in the site northwest of Washington and Pennsylvania streets, and he holds out hope he can find enough investor capital to build the proposed 25-story tower. Garrett—who grew up in Indianapolis but now lives in Chicago—had been working since late last year to assemble properties and design the ambitious plan with the help of locally based WDI Architecture Inc. But the odds of success were long thanks to the project’s scope, its lack of parking and financing hurdles, as IBJ reported on Sept. 8. What will work here?