Entries associated with the tag "Chicago Children's Museum":

Political disputes in Chicago are, of course, always about who has power, money, and clout. But two of the biggest battles of the last few months erupted over questions about the appropriate use of public park space. I recently sat down with Erma Tranter, president of the advocacy organization Friends of the Parks, to get her take on the ongoing discussions about the Park District’s partnerships with the private sector, the system’s funding and infrastructural needs, and her organization’s own controversial proposals to create an uninterrupted public lakefront from the far north to the far south sides of the city. (Listen to the full interview: )

You’ve got a news clipping in front of you about the Lincoln Park-Latin School soccer field controversy. Critics are saying that, along with the Children’s Museum’s plan to move into Grant Park, it would have set a precedent for turning public land over to private entities.

On the Lincoln Park soccer field, Friends of the Parks opposed that proposal when it came before the community in 2003, when a different [Park District] administration talked about a soccer field at the same site, with a quarter-mile track around it. And there was opposition for a number of reasons, number one that this site is fairly small. It was a meadow and it was intended to be a meadow. In addition to that, this was not a public-private partnership that was in the best interest of the public. There are some partnerships that do benefit the public, such as when the Cubs or Sox build a new baseball field for kids, or when Nike sponsored soccer fields on the south side—they’ll pay for it but not use it themselves. In this case it was building and using taxpayer dollars for a private institution that should be looking to buy its own land.

So it died in 2003, and when it was resurrected without any community involvement in October of 2006 no one had a clue at first. I was really taken aback—I only saw it because we saw the agenda on a Tuesday for a Park District meeting on Wednesday.

It resulted in a new group being formed to litigate, and they got a judge who saw this as a public land deal that was bad for the public. So that’s a case that shows that the Park District has to really rethink this kind of public-private partnership where you give public land to benefit private institutions. It’s wrong, and it’s been declared wrong by the courts.

You do want the recreational fields—we have great need for them. Soccer, for example, is a growing sport. But you need a plan—how large a space will it need? What areas of the city really need it? Is there accessibility for people to get to the location?

The Children’s Museum is a little different. Museums historically are part of our park system. For Friends of the Parks—and it was different for a variety of groups—we were looking at legal precedents that govern Grant Park and say no above-ground buildings can be built. We wanted to protect those covenants.

The museum did agree to put more of the new building underground.

We saw three iterations of their design, and after every one of them we met with them and said, “It’s still a building.”

Why does the Park District need to rely on private partnerships? Is the money coming in just not enough?

We have an aging park system and they have a lot of capital demands in almost all neighborhoods. For example, they have like 500 children’s playgrounds. They were all rebuilt between ’88 and ’93, but the life expectancy for a children’s playground is 15 years, so hundreds of their playgrounds have exceeded their life expectancy—hundreds. And we have limited park space—7,000 acres for the whole city. So the parks we do have are overused.

It makes sense for the Park District to look for these partnerships, but to discern between those they should be working toward and those they shouldn’t even have a discussion about. I don’t see in their budget that they get a whole lot of private grants, and I think that’s something they could grow. [Superintendent] Tim Mitchell has been looking to find state support. And they are looking for aldermanic money—to say, “The park advisory council wants a new playground, and you, alderman, need to kick in for it [out of your menu budget].” And what we’ve been saying is that the district needs to push for its share of TIF money—they should be getting 7 percent of it.

Now there’s another issue with the public use of park land. The Park District recently approved two new schools being built in public parks. We need good schools, but the Board of Ed should be looking elsewhere—there’s a lot of vacant land in the city. This is an encroachment on limited green space.

The second trend that’s emerged in the last few months is that the city’s Department of Aging has capital dollars, and they apparently didn’t get land to build senior centers on so they’re negotiating with the Park District [to build] one at Wildwood, on the northwest side, and a second one at Warren Park up north. Why is parkland free land for them? We do really think the Park District is beginning to be considered the local land bank. We need our Park District to stand up right in the beginning—the commissioners should be our protectors.

We do think the park facilities themselves should have top-of-the-line senior programs right within our park buildings. We used to have them and lots have been cut back, but most of these buildings are vacant until kids come in around 2:30.

Is there anything the Park District has been doing well?

They’re doing more natural areas—planting more native grasses and things so you have more habitat for small critters and certainly migratory birds, and they’re beautiful to see. They have some spectacular gardens in regional parks. I think their overall maintenance and beach cleanup is good. And the last several years the Park District’s summer activities—the movies in the park have been terrific, and there have been more concerts in the park.

Why does it seem that some of the facilities are so much better in some places? Lincoln Park is the obvious example—it’s strikingly different from Garfield Park or Washington Park just in the way it’s kept up.

Parks on the west side and south side are receiving capital dollars. In Washington Park they just did a huge playground initiative and they did the lagoons. They spent millions of dollars restoring the Garfield Park conservatory, in partnership with Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance, an organization that we formed, and it’s because there’s a powerful community there. It takes a strong community to work with the Park District to really maximize the use and benefit and look of a park. Lincoln Park has all kinds of stewards, they’ve got volunteers, they’ve got two advocacy organizations—there are a lot of citizens involved. Washington Park does too—the Washington Park Advisory Council has started a conservancy, and there are capital dollars going down there.

But I’ve walked each of these places recently and the differences jump out at you.

It takes a lot of volunteers, I guess. I’m trying to think of some of the greatest parks—one is Wicker. It’s tiny, but my god, they have a garden club, they have an advisory council, they have a force of nature there named Doug Wood, and I can’t believe how much time he devotes to that park. Just this Sunday they had 2,000 people in this tiny park because they had a farmers' market, they had garden walks, they had historic tours, they had a trio—a jazz band—and it was all community-based. There’s another one, Commercial Club Playground, further west off Chicago Avenue. They do yoga classes—they raise the money. They do art classes for kids, and no holiday passes without a party for the kids there. So I think it does take a strong community to work closely with the Park District. The Park District can’t just go into some place and say, “We’re going to restore this playground” without the community. You need the volunteers, you need citizens who care, you need citizens to be the voice and the advocate, and the Park District needs to recognize those people and facilitate their work.

Speaking of community voices, you heard quite a few of them in meetings the last couple of weeks where you presented your plans for the far north lakefront. And a Sun-Times columnist wasn’t particularly charitable about the exercise. What’s going on?

The Burnham Plan’s anniversary is coming up next year. Well, we have 30 miles of lakefront from the Indiana border to the Evanston border. Over time people have decided the lakefront is going to remain free for everyone—it’s not going to belong to the rich and it’s not going to belong to industry. It is public land. But in the beginning those parks weren’t there—they’re all lakefill. The lake came to Michigan Avenue here; it came to Clark Street up at North Avenue. You go west to Marine Drive at Foster—that’s all lakefill.

So we’ve done 26 miles and we’ve got four to go to complete the lakefront plan—two on the south side [starting at 71st Street] and two on the north side [starting at Ardmore]. Our goal is to show what the city would look like if we had the ability to accomplish this now or in 50 years or later. So starting in 2005 we went out to the community and had countless meetings. What we came up with is not a Friends of the Parks plan; it’s a community plan. And our architects, working pro bono, came up with something on the south side so that you could ride your bike south of 71st Street. And then on the north side, because you’ve got Edgewater with high rises and Rogers Park with low-rises, [we came up with a plan for] minimal connection of the beaches.

On the north side, the community in Rogers Park was the most vehement. Most people said, “We have these street-end beaches and we want to keep these street-end beaches.” The problem is that people from the west of Sheridan think of those beaches as private because they perceive the community as thinking of those as private. We heard from the community who wanted nothing—they like Rogers Park as it is. We also heard from people who weren’t intimidated by the shouting that “Yes indeed, we want it if it’s a minimal parkland that’s created—we certainly don’t want Lake Shore Drive [extended north of Hollywood], we want no marina, we want no commercial development.”

So you’re saying you’d like to see this open lakefront from border to border.

We want to produce a concept plan by 2009 for finishing the last four miles of the lakefront. We will have engineering studies done to support the feasibility of it. Ultimately, future generations are going to complete the lakefront, and we think this is an assist.

Have you heard from the city about this?

Before we started this, we met with the city’s planning department, the Park District, all the aldermen along the lakefront, and the U.S. congressmen. We talked about completing the lakefront being part of the Burnham Plan. They were supportive of us going ahead with it because we were going to the community with it.

By some counts, mean First Ward alderman Manny Flores decided not to help the children Wednesday, instead casting the first "No" vote on the Children's Museum's planned relocation to Grant Park. But by Thursday, he had moved on to other issues--such as what he's going to read to the children who come to story time in his ward in a couple weeks.

"I knew he had a 2-year-old son," Brownfield says.

They haven't finalized the reading list yet, though Brownfield is recommending Jack and the Beanstalk. Isn't that the one about a giant who walks around mumbling and smelling blood? That is, before he falls? Yeah, that might be interesting. How about, say, "The Emperor's New Clothes"? The Wizard of Oz? The David and Goliath story from the Old Testament?

Flores says he's probably going to pull from his son Teddy's library--maybe The Lorax (fitting for a rust belt city that wants to keep going green) or The Little Engine That Could. In fact, alderman, if that one goes well, would you think about taking story time elsewhere--like the next meeting of the Independent Caucus? 

Lobbying by the Children’s Museum and mayor’s staff obviously had a bigger impact over the last few weeks—especially the last few hours—than the push from 42nd Ward alderman Brendan Reilly and other opponents of the museum's Grant Park plan.

A couple of aldermen said Wednesday that mayoral aides offered them administration help for projects in their wards in return for their votes. While horse trading is part of politics, some of the projects probably would have—and almost certainly should have—received city help without the promise of a vote on a citywide issue. As one alderman put it: “I just wonder if they cashed in for too little.”

But this is why the mayor and his team are good: they don’t just ask (or tell) people how to vote. They also provide the goodies to help the decisions get made—and the arguments that can be used to defend them.

Way back when, Mayor Daley and allies like Father Pfleger suggested that opponents of the museum plan were essentially racist for not wanting black and brown kids in Grant Park. That didn’t go over too well, so the arguments kept changing. By the time of Wednesday's vote supporters were reciting another line: the museum will offer poor kids the chance to expand their horizons by getting out of their neighborhoods and visiting the city’s front yard, which some aldermen referred to as the city's "back yard." (The fact that schools already can—and do—take field trips to cultural institutions downtown was generally left unmentioned, as was the thought that they can currently visit Grant Park at any time.)

Shortly before the vote an alderman and a mayoral staffer each made versions of this argument to me. Then, during the debate on the council floor, almost every alderman who spoke in support of the museum plan offered a variation of it. I can’t state for certain that cheat sheets were circulated. And in fairness, opponents of the plan shared some arguments too. But the sudden frequency of the cultural enrichment defense was odd if it wasn’t planned. Some examples:

Billy Ocasio, 26th Ward: “I envision parents having the opportunity to spend the day to take their children to the greatest backyard the city ever had: Grant Park. It is our greatest backyard. It is a backyard a lot of our children don’t get to go to very often. It is a backyard where they could run, observe, and explore things they’ve never seen before. Our children in our poor communities of the city may never have a chance to get down there. If you talk about the neighborhoods, our children need an opportunity to explore. Our children need an opportunity to see the rest of the city—to get out there and imagine and be creative. That’s what this provides them. This is our backyard—let the children come here and kick the ball around.”

Emma Mitts, 37th Ward: “Why shouldn’t our children be able to have the opportunity to go and experience the cultural diversity that this city has? You know, if I’d had that opportunity when I was a child I think I would have had a better life. But now I’m not going to deny these children that opportunity.”

George Cardenas, 12th Ward: “I took my family to visit Grant Park. I wanted to do my homework—I wanted to make the right decision. So we went there. I took my two daughters. It was a Sunday, and we’d just had breakfast. And to me, it was important because it was for my daughters that I was going to be making this decision. And I stood in Bicentennial Plaza, looking toward the lake, looking south toward Grant Park. And I said to my daughter, ‘Isn’t this beautiful?’ And she said, ‘Yes, Papi.’ And that to me was showed me what this was about.”

Toni Foulkes, 15th Ward: “I have to agree with my colleagues—it’s all about the children. I remember when I was young, going to see the King Tut exhibit. My friends and I took the Green Line downtown by ourselves. That one ride got me out of my comfort zone, going somewhere else by myself. Kinds in our communities like West Englewood need to get out of their neighborhoods.”

Ike Carothers, 29th Ward: “I come from a community where I really believe young people will relish the opportunity to come downtown. … And my colleague from the 42nd Ward, I’ve got to tell you, I hope you’re buying us all lunch, because this debate has kept us here a long time.”

Over the years I've heard countless explanations from various aldermen of what TIFs are and how they work.

I've heard aldermen Berny Stone and Ed Burke claim that TIFs don't raise property taxes, even though they obviously do. I've heard former alderman Patrick O'Connor say that the operating details of TIFs are just too complicated for ordinary people to understand, so why bother explaining. And I've heard everyone from former alderman Ted Matlack to alderman Pat Levar get lost in the netherworld of tax increment financing until all eyes glazed over.

But yesterday up on the northwest side I heard something unique. Speaking before a group of residents who wanted his opinion about a TIF-funded school proposed for their community, 38th Ward aldermen Tom Allen told something close to the truth. TIFs, he said, are "slush funds" created by raising the property tax.

Why is the city using them to build new schools? someone in the audience asked.

Because it's embarrassing to keep doling them out to developers, he explained. "We've got this little slush fund called the TIFs just sitting there. We [the aldermen] started convincing the [Daley] administration to have to cut loose this money."

Maybe Allen's gearing up to take the bold step of voting against future TIF districts, which require City Council approval.

At the same meeting Allen took a survey, asking his listeners whether they supported putting the Children's Museum in Grant Park.

The audience erupted with a chorus of nos, firing off a barrage of questions and comments: Why put it there? How much stuff are they going to cram in that park? They should put it somewhere that really needs it.

This meeting was being held in the basement of a church near Cicero and Addison, mind you. So Mayor Daley can't accuse these people of being high-rise dwellers who want to keep black children out of their neighborhood.

"When Mayor Daley gets mad at me, will you stick up for me?" asked Allen, strongly suggesting that he planned to vote against the museum.

"Will you stick up for us?" one resident responded.

Ah, Chicago, city of deals. 

The Tribune reports today that officials from the Chicago Children's Museum decided to take their case for moving to Grant Park to their constituents--literally. In other words, they made their argument that this is all about the children to the children:

"As the children munched on pretzels and drank from juice boxes at the Harris Park Field House, Jim Law, the museum's vice president of planning and external affairs, said the project was good for families."

Odd? Perhaps. Exploitative? Some would say so. But here's where it gets really ... deep. The Trib reports the event was organized by one Georgette Greenlee-Finney, executive director of the Woodlawn Organization.

Greenlee-Finney's the wife of the organization's CEO and president, Leon Finney Jr. Finney, a big Daley ally, is a member of the Chicago Plan Commission, the body that's supposed to rule on the move next week.

The Chicago Plan Commission is set to take up the Chicago Children’s Museum’s plans to move into Grant Park at its May 15 meeting, and the safe bet is on the museum getting its way. Why? Well, the commission rarely sees a high-powered zoning change it doesn’t like. Then there’s the rather vocal position of its most important member, Mayor Daley. And finally there's the matter of the individual loyalties and ties of all the other commissioners:

• Linda Searl, chair: A partner in the respected Searl Lamaster Howe architectural firm, Searl is ten-year veteran of the commission, a donor to Daley’s campaign committee, and a longtime adviser to Daley and the city’s planning department.
• Mayor Richard M. Daley: Didn’t we hear something about how he’s going to look out for the children?
• Arnold L. Randall: As the commissioner for the city’s planning department, he reports to Mayor Daley.
• Tom Byrne: As the commissioner of the city’s Department of Transportation, he reports to Mayor Daley.
• David Weinstein: Now the president of the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center, a nonprofit affiliate of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, which receives thousands of dollars a year in city funding. He formerly served as the mayor’s “technology adviser.”
• Alderman William J.P. Banks: The northwest side alderman chairs the City Council’s powerful zoning committee—which would take up this proposal next if the commission passes it. He's one of Daley’s staunchest council backers and proud of it.
• Patricia Scudiero: Scudiero is the top official—officially the "administrator"—for the city’s Department of Zoning, which enforces and interprets the city’s zoning code. As the Chicago Tribune has reported, Scudiero formerly served on Banks’s zoning committee staff and worked for the planning department.
• Alderman Edward M. Burke: Among his many intertwining business and political relationships, the City Council’s finance committee chairman has received numerous campaign contributions from museum board secretary Matthew Neumeier.
• Leon D. Finney, Jr.: Finney was one of the mayor’s earliest and most vocal supporters in the black community, and the nonprofit he leads, the Woodlawn Organization, has received millions of dollars from the city for social service and public housing programs.
• Alderman Mary Ann Smith: Smith often touts her independence but is usually a reliable council vote for the mayor’s initiatives. She’s enthusiastically supported the Daley administration’s ever-expanding use of TIFs, including several in and around her 48th Ward, and she’s got a record of using hardball tactics and backroom deals to eliminate political opposition.
• Doris B. Holleb: The University of Chicago trustee and professor of economics and urban planning has served as a consultant to the city’s planning department and an education, economics, and cultural adviser to the Carter, Reagan, and Clinton administrations. Her husband, Marshall, is a widely respected preservationist and attorney who has donated thousands of dollars to numerous political campaigns, including those of aldermen Smith and Banks.
• Lyneir Richardson: Richardson is a registered City Hall lobbyist for General Growth Properties, a real estate firm that develops, owns, and manages shopping malls in 45 states. The firm has received hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks around the country, according to a study by SEIU, which has been in a pissing match with it over procedures for unionizing employees.
• Carole Brown: Besides being appointed by the mayor to chair the CTA’s board, Brown is a member of the Children’s Museum board.
• Smita Shah: She’s the president and CEO of SPAAN Technology, which last fall received a $5 million city contract to provide engineering services for the city’s transportation department. The firm has also done work for the CTA and Chicago Public Schools.
• George W. Migala: Migala’s a radio broadcaster and station executive at WCEV 1450-AM.
• Alderman Patrick O'Connor: As Daley’s unofficial City Council floor leader, he’s about as loyal as they come. He’s currently got a campaign war chest of about $400,000, much of it contributed by developers, realtors, and construction interests.
• John H. Nelson: Nelson, a $5,500 donor to Mayor Daley’s 2007 reelection campaign, is an architect with Harley Ellis Devereaux, whose work includes the Boeing Galleries in Millennium Park, the 18th District police station, and the Picnic Grove Pavilion at the Lincoln Park Zoo.
• Nancy A. Pacher: Pacher is president and chief operating officer of U.S. Equities, an international real estate firm that has received millions of dollars in city business for property management and consulting work on TIFs.
• Alderman Bernard L. Stone: Stone isn’t above berating a city official when he’s worked up during a meeting of the City Council’s buildings committee, which he chairs. He’s not even above stalling what he deems “stupid” ordinances some of these officials occasionally send him. But after more than three decades as an alderman, he’s not going to suddenly become an independent. Like most other influential aldermen, Stone receives thousands of dollars in political contributions from developers every campaign cycle.
• Gracia M. Shiffrin: Now the senior director for development and construction programs for Catholic Charities, Shiffrin previously held several high-ranking positions in the Daley administration, including deputy chief of staff to Daley, assistant planning commissioner, and assistant corporation counsel.
• Alderman Regner "Ray" Suarez: As chairman of the council’s housing committee, Suarez is a proud defender of the Daley administration’s housing and development record. He too is able to rake in campaign contributions—about $147,000 in just the last six months of 2007, when he wasn’t running for anything. As with his council colleagues on the Plan Commission, Suarez collected a good chunk of his cash from developers and construction companies. But he’s the only one who will be faced with a conflict of interest if the entity known as Fullerton Cicero Donuts ever has a matter before the commission. It gave him $1,025 last year.

A lot of our political leaders have been busy playing cards.

Earlier this week Mayor Daley played the Evil Unions Card, so you had to know it was only a matter of time before he returned to his old favorite: the Race Card.

And there it was on Wednesday (the same day he threatened to play the utterly predictable Tax Hike Card), when he suggested prejudice is what’s motivating opponents of the plan to move the children’s museum to Grant Park.

As might be expected, he surrounded himself with loyal aldermen who awkwardly tried to play the It’s In The Public Interest Card.

“This is a public park. People keep acting like it’s a private park,” 17th Ward alderman Latasha Thomas told the Sun-Times.

Thomas was right—but she may not want to make that point too loudly around her mayor or his children’s museum friends. I’m pretty sure the Chicago Children’s Museum is a private institution that wants to build its new pay-to-visit facility on public land.

In fact, 42nd Ward alderman Brendan Reilly also played the It’s In The Public Interest Card Wednesday, except he was explaining his firm opposition to the plan during an evening speech to Streeterville residents.

“I was just informed on my way to this meeting that Mayor Daley again chose to play the Race Card in this debate,” Reilly said. “We hosted nine public meetings on the museum plan. If the mayor had been at one of those meetings—just one—he would have seen the diversity. And the one thing people were unanimous about was their rejection of this proposal.”

Reilly, though, didn’t stop there. He played the Hypocrisy Card, then backed himself up with the Here Are The Facts Card, which is seldom used in local politics.

“I think it’s ridiculous to suggest that children are currently not allowed to play in Grant Park,” he said. “If you visit Grant Park you will see hundreds of children of every race and creed playing in the park at no charge. The truth is that under this proposal children will be welcome to play in Grant Park—so long as th