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In a post earlier this week on the city’s concert scene, commenter Hugh objected to the city charging people to sit on the lawn in Millennium Park during last night’s Tori Amos show. Now the Friends of the Park group is adding their voice to those who question the private vs. public nature of the park system’s pride and joy.
The Sun-Times reports that last night’s concert was the first time the city charged an admission price for the lawn area. Friends of the Park president Erma Tranter stated that it’s “a precedent that is totally going against the plan for the park as a free and open space for the public.” Yet Millennium Park is both a private and publicly-funded space so the city feels justified in closing some or all of the spaces for events. In this case, only the Pritzker Pavillion area was closed to the public but expect this argument to begin again around September 8th as execs from Toyota have rented out the majority of the park for the day (to the tune of $800,000), essentially closing one of Chicago’s major tourist attractions (PDF).
While you could argue that $10 is a small price to pay to hear an artist of Amos’s stature, the city seems to be going out of their way to gouge its residents. First, they charged $10 a head to sit on the lawn (although a smaller-than-capacity crowd in the pavilion meant some lawn denizens got upgraded thanks to some friendly security guards). Then the city added insult to injury by preventing anyone from bringing any beverages into the space, including water. Of course, they’d be happy to charge you $6 for a Mini-me size beer. Add to that the $50,000 that JAM Productions paid Millennium Park to stage the show and even The Outfit is saying “Damn, that’s shady.”
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I think the general rule is, if you can rope it off, fence it, lock it, you will get charged to watch it. I wonder if this is part of Daley's Special Downtown tax?
I think the best place to listen to a "free" concert might be on top of the Bean.
being that sept. 8 is my birthday and toyota gets a good chunk of my monthly income, i almost feel like showing up to the park that day just to be surly.
They should check IDs. If you live in the city, it's free. If you don't, it's $10.
/Why not? You can't even get INTO the beaches in the north suburbs if you don't live there.
I'll say it again.. this is all an attempt to cover the cost overruns of Million-enium Park, which like all past city development projects, pads the pockets of developers and friends of the administration.
If the park was built on budget and on time, I don't think we would be having this conversation.
As long as these events are somwhat rare, I don't mind them at all. The city issues permits to private parties to close parks all the time, the income from these events helps maintain the parks.
How is this any different than when the city rented out grant park for Lalapalozza this year? Jam productions are the people who reaped the profits. The City will Rent most of it's public spaces to anyone who is willing to pay.
Lets stop compaining and look at the benefits. A production company rents out the park on a wednesday night when there are no public shows planned and the city gets $50,000. So that's 50,000 dollars to host free events later on.
I'm not going to even comment on the benefit of giving up the park one day for $800,000.
To suggest that these events are helping pay off cost over runs is somewhat silly as the city has been very up front about exactly how they will be spending the money on public programming.
Also "Million-enium Park" is really dumb. If you want to say something catchy about it's cost how bout "Half a Billonium Park"
after attending last night's show, what i'm most peeved about is that the "no cans or bottles" rule was not posted anywhere online in regards to the show or on the millenium.org website. i overheard one man demanding his money back because he called millenium park and was told bringing in wine was ok. i was expecting more of a ravinia vibe and was disappointed.