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Preservation Chicago announced its 7 most endangered buildings today, and on the list are surprise entries Grant Park and the Landmarks Ordinance. Also cited are Norwood Park, the American Book Company Building, the Devon Ave commercial district, the Booker Building and the Daily News building.
According to Preservation Chicago's report, Grant Park is endangered because of the plans to relocate the Children's Museum.
[That plan[ would impose more than 100,000 square feet of new construction on parkland intended as “forever open, clear and free”. This further diminishment of our city’s irreplaceable green heritage is unacceptable.
And about the Landmark Ordinance:
[S]everal recent redevelopment projects endorsed by the city’s planning department and approved by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks call into question whether the integrity of the ordinance itself is in danger of being destroyed...Allowing this proposal to move forward would render Chicago’s Landmark Ordinance meaningless. It could lead to the day when Michigan Avenue will become nothing more than a street full of soulless facades, pasted on to new structures that have no relation to the original intent of the architect or the architecture. This type of facadism not historic preservation and no world-class city should be subjected to the continued “Disneyfication” of its premiere boulevard.
Oh, snap! [Preservation Chicago]
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I like Preservation Chicago because it is very neighborhood-oriented and it was started by average citizens from various wards coming together. Those citizens, each fighting their own battles, joined the initial group and became very effective.
It's kind of a coincidence that the zoning article came out in the Tribune yesterday, since Preservation Chicago has been fighting that pay-to-play zoning as inherent part of saving old buildings.
I think Preservationist is a code word for "blind acceptance of bad ideas as long as they are old bad ideas."
Grant Park is a terrible park, built on Olympian scale with no reason for visitors to actually go there. GP is an immense green wasteland between the museums and civilization. On a typical summer day it has half the visitors of any neighborhood park because there's no reason to go there.
The "preservationists" only recourse to this charge is to make vague and hysterical assertions that building the Childrens' museum in the park [actually under it] creates a slippery slope that will ensure ugly condos, a McDonalds, Disney, and soon, an open air puppy abattoir.
It is apparently impossible to build a nice museum without moving to the latter once the first shovel of dirt has been removed.
I rather like Grant Park.
A "green wasteland"...thats what a park IS! Why must a park have attractions? Why do you need a reason to go there? Its not supposed to be a tourist attraction, with gates at the edges charging admission. The whole point is that a park is an escape from the urban chaos around you..a place where you can find solitude and peace. For a city that touts itself as a leader in the "green" movement, parkland in this city is few and far between. With so many areas needing redevelopment and an abundance of perfectly good vacant lots, why must me mar one of our true gems (for a private enterprise no less)?
I'll be the first to admit Grant Park isnt perfect..there are a lot of improvements that can be made. More trees, closing off or burying the intersecting streets which cut through, more natural landscape design..but suggesting you need a reason to go to a park is missing the point entirely.
A "green wasteland"...thats what a park IS! Why must a park have attractions? Why do you need a reason to go there? Its not supposed to be a tourist attraction, with gates at the edges charging admission. The whole point is that a park is an escape from the urban chaos around you..a place where you can find solitude and peace. For a city that touts itself as a leader in the "green" movement, parkland in this city is few and far between. With so many areas needing redevelopment and an abundance of perfectly good vacant lots, why must me mar one of our true gems (for a private enterprise no less)?
I'll be the first to admit Grant Park isnt perfect..there are a lot of improvements that can be made. More trees, closing off or burying the intersecting streets which cut through, more natural landscape design..but suggesting you need a reason to go to a park is missing the point entirely.
Really? There's no one in Grant Park on a summer day? I must have been on some crazy hallucinogens, because I saw people everywhere.
I think the battle is already lost. On one hand, we have a vibrant, living city (unlike other northern post-industrial cities); on the other hand, this is not the same City that I moved to nearly 20 years ago.
The Loop is nothing but a fast food court with streets running through it. Construction of high rises in River North have made Chicago look like Honolulu, but without any views of Diamond Head and the Pacific Ocean. Block after block of north side buildings have been replaced with cookie cutter condo buildings, devoid of any individual character whatsoever. Old buildings on our commercial streets (i.e Irving Park, Clark Street, Broadway) are being torn down and replaced with crappy commercial structures that wouldn't even look right in the suburbs. Corner taverns have been replaced with generic Big-Ten chain gastropubs, filled with flat screen TVs and people with no intention of making Chicago their long-term home. Also, have you seen what they did to Maxwell Street?
These battles needed to be fought 20 or 30 years ago. Sure, there are some places that can still be saved, but I think we missed the boat on historic preservation a long time ago.
The Chicago Seven site that bothers me the most is the Boooker Building at 47th and Cottage.
This is a perfectly solid, great-looking building that is at the same intersection as a recently landmarked bank.
However, Alderman Toni Preckwinkle wants to help one of her major campaign donors to demolish the Booker Building. Sound familiar? Just look at today's Tribune for another installment about the pay-to-play rezoning game.
Preckwinkle is claiming that those who want to preserve the Booker Building are "blocking progress." What progress? The progress of her cronies getting rich?
Here's the kicker. The demolition of the Booker Building is part of a Planned Development (i.e., a type of rezoning) that will be getting TIF money. That's right! Not only is Preckwinkle rezoning the site, she is using OUR tax dollars to help fund the demoliion of an historic building. That abuse or TIF dollars really adds insult to injury.
Didn't you hear, Ward Up? "Progress" is the McDonalds on the one corner, and the suburban-style Save-A-Lot parking lot on the other. Get rid of those old buildings, we need more strip mall parking lots.
In other news, I always thought the Daily News building (and the Opera across the river) made an excellent counterpoint to the Citigroup Center/Ogilvie Station
Speaking of preservation, a local comedian's organizing a "Save the Hole" rally at the Montrose Street collapse site this afternoon. The Department of Water Management's none to pleased.
tower18:
aka the place the Northwestern station was destroyed to make way for.
mass2400:
Agreed. I think a very solid case could be made that Chicago no longer qualifies as a tourist destination. Tourism, of course, represents a sustained influx of dollars into a city when there is a reason to visit the place, dollars that we're waving goodbye to, just so that a few know nothing developers can have their way.