Sunday, June 25, 2006

How Big Is It?

The Chicago Children's Museum proposes to build a new 100,000 square foot building beneath a northern section of Grant Park. The community is asked to believe that such a structure would have no significant impact on the park green and open space. How realistic is this claim?

Today, a large parking facility is built underground in this section of the park. While much greenery does remain above, there are also a number of structures on the surface, which provide for needs such as ventilation of the parking area. Few passersby would consider a ventilation duct attractive, but more importantly, these structures limit pathways and take up space that would otherwise be green. Since drivers park their cars and leave, today there are only a few people in the parking building at a time. An occupied building would call for excellent ventilation; what would the requirements for surface ducts or other structure be? The museum has stressed, in presentations and in its report "Standards of Excellence in Early Learning: A Model for the Chicago Children's Museum," its requirement for natural light. Permeating any large building with natural light is a design challenge, even more so an underground building, but it is difficult to imagine how this would be done without some significant above ground structure to open the building to sunlight.

Consider the size of the proposed new museum - one hundred thousand square feet. Two bedroom apartments in downtown Chicago are typically in the range of 800-1100 square feet each. The existing fieldhouse at Daley Bicentennial Plaza, built into a hillside at the northern edge of the park, is about 10,000 square feet. The current museum space at Navy Pier is 57,000 square feet. Most floors of the nearby 400 East Randolph Street condominium, which has the largest footprint of any building in the area, have 30 units ranging from 650-1100 square feet each - so 100,000 square feet is roughly equivalent to three full floors of a large high-rise building. Such a large occupied structure would certainly require considerable resources for light and ventilation, it is hard to believe that it could be built and function successfully without considerable impact to the park above.

Saturday, June 17, 2006

Petition to Preserve the Park

Petitions opposing the Chicago Children's Museum takeover of Daley Bicentennial Plaza have been circulating in the neighborhood near Daley Bicentennial Plaza. In the first two weeks of circulation, around 1500 signatures were collected. Final counts are expected to be considerably higher. Circulation of petitions is now ending, and neighborhood residents will again be reminding Alderman Natarus of their concerns.

Vocal neighborhood opposition to to the Children's Museum plan to take over the current site of the Daley Bicentennial Plaza is beginning to have some impact. A June 14 article in the Chicago Tribune quoted Alderman Natarus as saying that Peter England, CEO of the museum, had expressed "interest in a location farther south in Grant Park, near Monroe and Columbus Drives." However, a museum spokeperson also told the Tribune that the Daley Bicentennial Plaza site is still under consideration, and Peter England was not available for comment to the Tribune.

While preserving Daley Bicentennial Plaza as a community park is a primary concern, it is not the only concern. The land which constitutes the original footprint of Grant Park was deeded to remain "forever open, free and clear of buildings." Over time, this requirement has been repeatedly challenged, and the space remaining free of buildings has shrunk. The alternate site mentioned by the Tribune article is still clearly within the land area that is intended to be preserved as open space.

Other questions remain - how would the large structure that the museum prosposes to build (100,000 square feet) impact the surface and the landscape? How have museum officials come to believe that this protected park location is theirs for the taking? Why do they show no interest in seeking out locations elsewhere where a new museum and its visitors could enhance the community? How does the museum, whose current budget is only $6 million per year, expect to obtain the funding that would be required for such a large capital project?