Blair Kamin, the Chicago Tribune's architecture critic, reported last week on the city's plans to issue a Request for Qualifications from demolition contractors to dismantle the Michael Reese Hospital campus. The city plans to use the site for a proposed Olympic Village should Chicago win its bid to host the 2016 Summer Games. Chicago's RFQ raised the ire of local historic preservationists, who claim that the city plans to demolish nearly all of the buildings on the campus, including those designed by Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, as well as the prairie-style main hospital building, constructed in 1907. Those plans have now attracted national attention in an article published yesterday in the New York Times (via the Trib). more ›

In addition to No Games Chicago's anti-2016 rally planned for the IOC's final site visit on April 2nd, a few other groups are planning demonstrations that weekend as well. A group of community activists is now saying that unless the city agrees to minority contract and affordable housing stipulations as part of the Olympic bid, they make sure they embarrass the mayor. If Mayor Daley "wants to air his dirty laundry to the world, that is entirely up to him," Denise Dixon, executive director of Action Now told the Sun-Times. "If he don't want to see demonstrations in the street when they get here, then he better come up with something," she added. more ›