Park advocates differ on plan for children's museum
Mayor Richard Daley versus a local alderman. Wealthy civic leaders versus high-rise residents.
And now, park advocates versus … park advocates?
The multi-faceted debate over a proposed children's museum for Grant Park has become a little more complicated, thanks to the divergent views of Friends of the Parks and the Grant Park Conservancy.
Conservancy president Bob O'Neill supports a plan by the private Chicago Children's Museum to relocate from its popular home at Navy Pier to a section of Grant Park at Randolph Street and Columbus Drive. He argues that the environmentally sustainable, mostly underground building envisioned for the spot known as Daley Bicentennial Plaza would attract more people to the so-called front lawn of Chicago.
"There is a precedent for buildings being built in the park if they're cultural," O'Neill said last week. "Most of Grant Park is just dead most of the time when there's not a festival. The idea is to make it interesting and make it green. The children's museum will fit into that mission."
The Friends of the Parks, which has a broader, citywide mission, recently announced it opposes the children's museum plan as it currently is designed. The group cited a city lakefront-protection ordinance and earlier court rulings that obligate Chicago to keep Grant Park free of new buildings.
Erma Tranter, president of the Friends of the Parks, said the new children's museum would feature a 20-foot-high glass entryway - an obstruction that does not pass the test.
"This is not a purist" viewpoint, Tranter said. "This is a legacy of the city of Chicago, that we say our park is for recreation … We want green space for kids to be able to play, to fly a kite."
Tranter said the museum's above-ground entryway is different from the Pritzker Pavilion, the billowing silver metal concert venue by architect Frank Gehry that looms over nearby Millennium Park. She said the band pavilion is basically a giant sculpture. It also features free performances, she said, whereas the children's museum would charge an admission fee.
The area that is now Daley Bicentennial Plaza was once a sunken parking lot, not the slightly worn park with walkways and tennis courts that is there today. The plaza actually is a man-made green roof over a parking garage and field house.
City officials say the cover is in need of a surface-ripping overhaul. O'Neill opposed an earlier plan to relocate the children's museum at Monroe Street and Columbus Drive, but he said making the project part of the Bicentennial Plaza rehab is sensible. A new field house also would be built for the public to enjoy, he said.
Tranter questions the degree of repair work that is needed at the garage site. She said the city, if digs up the plaza, is obligated to top it off with park land.
Directors of the Chicago Children's Museum have said the attraction has outgrown its existing location at Navy Pier. The new $100 million building would contain 100,000 square feet.
Among the project's champions are Mayor Daley and billionaire members of the Pritzker family, one of whom chairs the board of the children's museum. Proponents envision an interlocking array of educational opportunities for kids that would take them from the Art Institute's new wing to Millennium Park to - across a pedestrian bridge - the new children's museum.
But Chicago Ald. Brendan Reilly, whose 42nd Ward includes Bicentennial Plaza, says he opposes the museum because it would violate the open-land traditions of Grant Park. Residents of nearby high-rises have said they oppose the museum because visiting school buses would tie up traffic on Randolph Street. They deny Daley's suggestions that they fear an influx of minority children and their parents.
O'Neill said he thinks opposition is of the "not-in-my-backyard" variety.
"They think they can have a country-like, bucolic setting" for themselves, he said. "They can't lay claim to Grant Park. It's everybody's park."
Tranter said the public debate about the children's museum has produced an upside: a discussion about the heritage of Grant Park.
"I think it's a wonderful discussion of history and current uses and maybe even current needs for the park itself," she said.
Mike Ramsey can be reached at (312) 857-2323 or ghns-ramsey@sbclobal.net <mailto:ghns-ramsey@sbclobal.net> .
Montgomery Ward and Grant Park
Montgomery Ward stores may have disappeared, but its founder left a lasting legacy for Chicago: a largely untouched Grant Park.
Retail giant A. Montgomery Ward began a protracted, bitter legal fight in 1890 to reclaim lakefront park land east of Michigan Avenue. For decades, the area - known then as Lake Park -- had been built over, in violation of an 1830s decree by city founders that the land remain "open, clear and free."
Ward ultimately prevailed with his lawsuits, which successfully blocked an attempt by
architect Daniel Burnham to build the Field Museum in Grant Park. But Ward was vilified in some quarters as an obstructionist.
There have been exceptions to the Grant Park building restriction, most notably the Art Institute of Chicago. It was constructed as a satellite component of the 1893 World's Fair and later was allowed to stay and expand.
Much of Grant Park is man-made, such as the city block known as Millennium Park, which was completed in 2004. It sits atop an underground parking garage.