Bob O’Neill, president of the Grant Park Advisory Council, jokes that his usual response to citizens concerned about new construction in the park is this: “Well, they’re actually out there building it right now, but thanks for the public input.”
Consider the case of Queen’s Crossing, the crosswalk linking Buckingham Fountain to the lakefront promenade. In 1995 the city spent over $9 million to restore Congress Plaza to its original Burnham Plan status as a grand pedestrian gateway, framed by Ivan Mestrovic’s majestic twin sculptures the Bowman and the Spearman. The gateway would draw visitors from Michigan Avenue along an axis proceeding to the fountain and then the lake.
Now O’Neill is working his magic for the CCM’s move from Navy Pier into Grant Park. A massive PR campaign that has to be costing the museum a pretty penny began with the March 2006 hiring of a stage manager, Jim Law, a 16-year City Hall veteran and long-time executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Special Events.
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You may already have heard the warm and fuzzy radio spots. “Daddy, how do airplanes fly?” a child asks as an announcer talks about a museum that will be “friendly to the environment” and “let our children’s imaginations soar.” The spot directs listeners to the plans on the museum’s Web site, where the only rendering is from so wide a perspective that the new CCM building almost disappears within several blocks of surrounding parkland. Think Dustin Hoffman’s screen test in Tootsie:
The Web site offers preaddressed e-mail to Alderman Reilly urging him to support the move. You can’t change the text, and Reilly’s address is hidden–if you want to write him with anything besides the CCM party line, you need to find it on your own.
The new museum alone would impose 100,000 square feet of new construction on the park, and an attached field house, replacing the Daley Bicentennial Field House at 337 E. Randolph, would add another 20,000 square feet. The museum is quick to assert that most of the footage would be below grade, but in a model of the design shown to community groups this summer an astounding amount was not.
“It’s not blackmail,” responded O’Neill. “It’s an example that has been set in the success of a lot of public improvements [such as] those pavilions that are around Buckingham Fountain. There is a balance between commercialism and its impact on the park, both negatively and positively. The most visible is Millennium Park. . . . You’ll notice the BP bridge says BP very tastefully. Yes, that is commercialization. The Jay Pritzker Pavilion says Pritzker on it. Boeing Plaza. McDonald’s skating rink. But it’s done tastefully.”
