August 31, 2004
City Center
Yesterday after work I had nowhere to go, so I took the opportunity to walk through Chicago's new Millenium park, which is finally open after years of construction and a final budget of $475 million, some $325 million over its initial budget. It is a perfect example of my love-hate relationship with Mayor Daley. I think he is a sleazeball autocrat who's used to getting what he wants, but I think that he does some really great things. I felt the same way about Clinton.
My favorite feature of the park is the bean (which is actually called "Cloud Gate," a name that will never stick), where you can see the skyline of the city distortedly reflected as you walk past. There's also the Pritzker Pavillion, which, from the side, looks like a galleon with its sails just beginning to billow out in the wind. Finally, there's the interactive Crown Fountain, where 50-foot-tall glass sculptures projecting images of regular Chicagoans spray water into a shallow (less than an inch deep) wading pool where people are encouraged to walk.
And people were walking there. When I passed through at around 7:00 p.m., there were hundreds of people wandering around, staring at the bean, splashing in the pool, and lining the edge of the Pritzker Pavillion, where a Frank Sinatra tribute band was warming up for Von Freeman, a local jazz legend.
Before this, Chicago lacked a distinctive city center, a place where people from all over would congregate just for the sake of congregating. A coworker who thinks the new park is hideous argues that everything I like about the park was already available a few blocks away at Grant Park, but I think she's wrong. Grant Park is a sprawling, open space that's either clogged up by festivals and events or completely barren; when there's nothing going on there, there's really nothing going on. It's all or nothing, while Millenium Park is more of an attraction in and of itself, and it's not intended to be co-opted by festivals.
A few days ago, I finished reading Erik Larson's book about the 1893 Columbian Exposition, The Devil in the White City, on the bus as it passed the new park. I couldn't help but see some similarities: the grossly overbudget public installation, driven by the will of a megalomaniac, that sought to establish Chicago as the premier city of the United States, and also to create something that would bring the city's disparate populations together. I think that, in both cases, the megalomaniacs in charge were correct in saying that cost was not an object. (We can only hope that Millenium Park doesn't attract any prolific serial killers, as the Columbian Exposition did.)
Posted by mike, August 31, 2004 12:25 PMThere is nothing like a good park. :-)
Posted by: shane at August 31, 2004 1:31 PMGrant Park is boring. It's just...um...grass.
Posted by: Shawn at August 31, 2004 4:26 PMAnd statues of Civil War heroes, covered with pigeon shit. I wonder how often they'll have to clean the new stuff?
Posted by: mike at August 31, 2004 5:41 PMWhen I post my online personal after I move, I'm going to include a picture of me in front of the bean. Partly to be a converstation starter, partly to distract from my own hideous form.
Posted by: Stevis at September 1, 2004 12:34 AMParks down here are not that interesting, though they are very nice. They have this interesting thing called trees that dot the parks all over the place, and often there is a lake or river or stream. It's a different kind of park, I guess. ;)
Posted by: shane at September 1, 2004 8:09 AMYeah, I thought of parallels to the Columbian Exposition as well when we visited Millenium Park. Except that the CE was on a much bigger scale, and wasn't it also publicly financed? I couldn't tell exactly how it worked from the Larson book...although I do remember that they had to apply to Congress for extra funds when they were going over budget. And large civic projects in the US -- genuinely for the public good (like improving transportation infrastructure), and not to glorify corporations -- are now largely a thing of the past.
All I know is that the first time I ever tried to go to Millenium Park -- on a Saturday evening -- it was closed for a "private donor's party." I can't imagine Burnham and Olmstead ever allowing such a thing at their Exposition...the public would have stormed the gates...
Posted by: KB at September 1, 2004 9:39 AMI think it would have been better had they spread out the attractions through Grant Park. Cloud Gate, et al would be so much more effective in a less paved environment.
Just imagine that giant silver bean rising out of a grass field, surrounded by trees and compare that image to the current concrete pedestal it's anchored to reflecting the summer heat to sweaty ends.
Posted by: travis at September 1, 2004 9:47 AMI think having them close together works. Spreading them out through Grant Park would (1) make it so they would be coopted by all of the festivals that happen in Grant Park and (2) eliminate that feeling of it being a city center.
Millenium Park must be publicly financed, at least partly, otherwise there wouldn't have been such public squawking about it being over budget. I don't think the CE was completely publicly financed; Larson mentions on page 320 how Burnham and company presented a check for $1.5 million to a private bank to cover the last of the fair's debts.
Posted by: mike at September 1, 2004 11:34 AMThe city paid $270 million, with $95 million coming from the Central Loop TIF fund (you know, the fund that pays for the stupid fake bricks in intersections of gentrifying neighborhoods). http://www.ncbg.org/public_works/millennium_park.htm
Posted by: mike at September 1, 2004 11:43 AMBetter a bean than stupid fake bricks, I say!
Posted by: rebecca at September 1, 2004 1:32 PM