For nearly two decades the landscaped vacant lot next to the AMA building, between State and Wabash and right across the street from the Reader’s office on Illinois, has served as an ersatz neighborhood park–complete with sniffing dogs, lunching office workers, and drug dealers. When we heard recently about plans for a 35-story residential/hotel tower there, we knew the benches and fountains were history. Worse, the plaza’s 26 red maple trees seemed doomed. Sure enough, during the last week of September they were uprooted in dramatic fashion. But they haven’t gone to the chipper.
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Barbara Wood, the Chicago Park District’s deputy director of natural resources (and before that its chief landscape architect), received a “communication” from the John Buck Company, the developer of the property, back in May asking if the CPD would like to have the trees. She told them, “We don’t have the means to move them.”
Wood’s challenge was to find a park that could use more trees and then places within that park where the tree spade wouldn’t slice through underground plumbing and wiring. (Curiously, the Park District has better records of old utility work by CPD employees than new: “Now that all engineering design and installation is done through consultants,” says Wood, “sometimes we don’t get updated drawings.”) She found room for the AMA refugees on the east side of Humboldt Park, where they’d be placed in six separate groupings. Besides being a large historic park in need of replacement trees, Humboldt had another advantage: it’s pretty much a straight shot along Grand from the AMA plaza, with no undersized viaducts along the way. The trees lie almost horizontally on the truck, but they still need a clearance of 13 and a half feet.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Tree spade at AMA Plaza by Chicago Reader.
