Photos: Exploring The 606 With Mayor Emanuel Ahead Of Its June 6 Opening
By Rachel Cromidas in News on Jun 3, 2015 8:20PM
Chicago is ready for The 606. That much is clear from the dozens of essays, news reports and real estate trend pieces that have been penned in anticipation of the elevated public park since construction began two years ago.
But is The 606 ready for the hoards of families, joggers, cyclists and architecture critics eager to ascend its sloping public parks and elevated trail this month?
With just days to go before its big June 6 unveiling to the public, The 606, still known to most as the Bloomingdale Trail for the Bloomingdale Line railroad tracks it once carried across the West Side, is still waiting on several important finishing touches before it can live up to its hype.
From the unlaid blue rubber that should line the trail's perimeter to the unpaved street beneath the trail, the unfinished light fixtures, unbuilt benches and, everywhere, the collection of saplings that should one day create a canopy of shade across the trail, The 606 remains a work-in-progress. Two of the six ground-level parks along the trail could take another couple years yet to be completed, according to officials, and crews are still waiting to plant several species of plants that prefer to be planted in the fall.
And as Crain's Edward Keegan and other architecture critics have pointed out, the spare minimalist design of Brooklyn landscape architect Michael van Valkenburgh, with simple metal railings and an unadorned concrete path stretching uniformly from trail end to end (and so unlike the public art-strewn High Line in New York City), may never be to everyone's liking.
And not to pile on the skepticism, but the cyclists among our staff are also struggling to imagine how the 14-foot wide path will accommodate cyclists anticipating a future commuter pathway alongside stroller-pushes, joggers and casual people-watchers.
We toured a portion of the elevated trail over Humboldt Park with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the Trust for Public Land director Beth White and several city officials Tuesday afternoon, as they surveyed the progress that's been made on the $95 million project. We watched as construction crews continued to jackhammer away and took in the views of the Kimball Arts Center, a statue warehouse and other neighborhood landmarks that are sure to get new attention from the trail.
White for one encourages viewers to imagine what will be once the 200-some types of native grasses and trees transform from bulbs below the soil that stretches several feet under the trail into a windswept, 2.7-mile landscape from Ashland Avenue to Ridgeway Avenue. And keep an eye out for quaking aspens, ginkgo trees and a tunnel-like mass of sumacs.
"People wanted some shade up here, and that's going to take a little while," White said. "Just imagine these trees getting that tall."