In just a few months, the fate of the 1992 Chicago World`s Fair may be determined by the Illinois legislature, and there`s considerable doubt about its prospects.
The legislature is scheduled to vote this spring on whether to authorize a $1 billion long-term financial package. Chicago`s city council has yet to approve the 600-acre Burnham Harbor site that has been chosen by fair planners. And earlier this week the fair authority missed its deadline for coming to terms with the Chicago Park District, which owns most of the proposed site on the Near South lakefront. House Speaker Michael Madigan has named a blue-ribbon panel headed by former U.S. Sen. Adlai Stevenson III to make recommendations on the fair`s viability.
”We`ve got about four months to persuade the legislature that it ought to be more than a theory or a concept, and we`ve got to get cracking,” Gov. Jim Thompson said during a Sunday interview on WBBM radio`s ”At Issue”
program.
Thompson and former Mayor Jane Byrne successfully lobbied the White House to gain President Reagan`s endorsement of Chicago as the site for the 1992 fair. Had Byrne won re-election in 1983, it`s doubtful that the fair would have run into such opposition, because of her strong commitment to it.
Her successor, Mayor Harold Washington, says publicly that the fair is a good idea. But Washington is privately skeptical about the current plan. Ald. Edward R. Vrdolyak (10th), chairman of the Cook County Democratic organization and leader of the city council`s majority bloc, would like to use the World`s Fair as an urban renewal project in his ward. Vrdolyak and his ally, Ald. Bernard Stone (50th), have recommended that the fair be shifted from Burnham Harbor to the soon-to-be-dormant U.S. Steel South Works.
John Kramer, the energetic general manager of the Chicago World`s Fair 1992 Authority, makes the argument that the fair could lose its international accreditation if the city council vetoed the original site. Stone, though, insists that the South Works site would be acceptable to the international panel. While Thompson said he was impressed with the South Works presentation, he still favored Burnham Harbor.
In the radio interview, Thompson noted, ”The chief impediment to the World`s Fair is lack of support for it in the City of Chicago. About the only municipal or statewide official I know of who is enthusiastic about the fair is me.”
”At this point in the Chicago business community and in the Chicago political community, there`s no substantial support for the fair, and in the suburbs and collar counties and Downstate, there`s substantial hostility. That`s not the ingredients to make it go,” Thompson said. The Illinois Farm Bureau has voiced its opposition to any tax increase designed to benefit the fair. A Downstate GOP strategist said that being against the fair is politically fashionable in most of the state.
Indeed, Ald. Martin Oberman (43d) kicked off his campaign for attorney general by attacking the World`s Fair in his hometown.
The major reason so many politicians are lukewarm about the fair is their feeling that they were cut out of the original planning. Except for Thompson, Byrne and Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, House Ways and Means Committee chairman, few pols were invited to participate by former Commonwealth Edison chief Tom Ayers and civic leaders who launched the fair.
Even if fair planners manage to overcome the political obstacles, they must convince the Chicago business community, Congress and other nations that it`s worth the investment. In the wake of the financial collapse of the 1984 New Orleans World`s Fair, that`s not going to be easy. Kramer makes the argument that the failed New Orleans exhibition can`t be compared with Chicago`s fair because it was a minor league fair.
Maybe so. But two of the last three bigtime fairs–the 1967 Montreal Expo and the 1964 New York World`s Fair–wound up losing millions. Even with Robert Moses, the legendary city planner, in charge of the New York fair, it was a commercial disaster. About the only enduring monument of the New York fair is Shea Stadium. And some political insiders are now suggesting that the one thing that could salvage the Chicago fair is a domed stadium, which could attract the Super Bowl as well as enhance the fair`s status.
