Amenities suggested for tourists range from multi-language signs such as those in Japan to ”photo spots.” Bill Gill of Hoffman Estates was the first to suggest pilfering this idea from Disney World. ”Professional photographers would designate the best spots to photograph Chicago`s magnificent sights,”
he says. Each spot would be marked with a sign, and the complete list would be available in a pamphlet for visitors. Laurie L. Gutstein, M.D., wants us to borrow a Japanese tradition and provide decorative rubber stamps and ink pads in major buildings and tourist attractions whose prints visitors can
”collect” as souvenirs. Doris S. Newman of Chicago wants hotels to provide foreign guests with a card showing the name and address of the hotel on one side and directions to a destination printed or drawn on the reverse, so the visitor can simply show the card to a cab driver or passerby to get directions, an idea in broad use in the Orient. On the return, the guest simply shows the hotel side of the card to a cab driver.
Faye Neville and Barb Bonfield of Wheaton would like Chicago to offer an interactive 800 number tourists could call for information about the city`s attractions. After a short recorded message, the caller is instructed to press 2 for gangster information, 3 for music, etc. Each category is further divided so the caller can get very specific information-blues clubs only, for example. Lew Klein of Chicago makes this idea pay for itself by giving it a 900 number, which would charge the user a nominal rate for the call. Nancee James of Chicago would like the AM radio frequency used for expressway traffic conditions to be expanded to include information on Chicago events and attractions, to be paid for with commercials. Micki Johns of Naperville wants to see a short-term, flat-rate family membership that would be valid for all the museums and cultural attractions in Chicago.
And please, asked so many readers, get a good system of public toilets for Chicago. Joyce Robbins of Skokie put it best: ”I have been fortunate enough to have traveled within Europe and in Asia, and everywhere I have gone, I have found places, segregated for the sexes with an attendant on hand. These are clean and in areas far from department stores or gas stations. Surely a sophisticated city like ours can move to see that such places are available.” Several readers would also like to see Chicago`s downtown buildings and areas be connected with weatherproof walkways, as Minneapolis is.
Two of the most intriguing ideas tried to provide the one missing item that prevents Oak Street Beach from being perfect: palm trees. Joey Tomassini of Torrance, Calif., suggested that huge planters, perhaps a dozen, be sunk in the Oak Street Beach and palms be planted there for the summer and removed for winter to one of the conservatories. SUNDAY consulted a horticulturist at the Garfield Park Conservatory who said it would be possible, so long as you were willing to lose a set of trees every year because palms do not like that much transplanting. ”And in order to make an impact, you would want trees 10 to 15 feet high,” he mused. All in all a grand, fanciful idea.
Chicagoan Sonia Witkys took a more practical stance: ”Decorate light poles as palm trees along the Lake Shore Drive beaches. During the summer our beautiful lakefront, particularly North Avenue and Oak Street beaches, could rival many of Florida`s beaches. With the sailboats dotting the water, suntanned bodies on the sand and all of the activities that go with summer, the only thing missing is palm trees. Of course, they would have to be artificial (fronds) and removed for the winter.”
”Because of our other name, `the Windy City,` I suggest a large, attractive and accurate wind gauge be installed in the vicinity of Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue. This gauge could give readings of the wind velocity at street level and from the top of some suitable nearby high building,”
suggests James D. Hawthorne of Barrington.
Create ”maverick tables” in restaurants like those in Santa Fe, where solo diners may join others of similar status if they desire, urges Florence Saper of Chicago.
Like Boston, Springfield and at least 21 other communities, Chicago should have a citywide ”First Night” celebration of the arts on New Year`s Eve, several readers suggested, noting that the city no longer has an organized public event on this night. C.E. Gerwig of Algonquin fantasizes one of the Big Three downtown skyscrapers connecting its lights so that midnight could be counted down as floor after floor was lit in a timed sequence, culminating at the stroke of 12. ”The visual effect of this huge, climbing column of light should be spectacular, and at midnight this effect could be enhanced by fireworks or other display from atop this tower of light,” Gerwig says.
Cries of ”Do something with Navy Pier” abounded: Turn it over to private developers, make a boardwalk of it, but for Chicago`s sake, use it!
readers pleaded. Cover the banks of the river with stalls selling books and crafts like the Seine in Paris. Or do the same in Grant Park on Sunday, as they do in Malaga, Spain. Give the parks first-class restaurants. Create a cross-country ski trail in Lincoln Park. A bike parking garage in the Loop. Stand-to-the-right signs on all escalators. Offer voyageur-style canoe rides on the Chicago River. Create a permanent city suggestion box. Build a new stadium by allowing fans to buy ”bricks” at $20 a crack. Develop the river and other waterways the way San Antonio has made use of its river. Illuminate the downtown bridges at night with Italian lights or floodlights for a glorious sight. What the heck, have a bridge day, raise them all and celebrate with bunting and fireboats shooting colored water. Introduce parasailing on the lake in the summer. The list goes on and on.
About this point it became clear that this contest was too big for one magazine to handle.
If SUNDAY readers put all this thought and sweat into their consulting work, it ought to pay off even for those who didn`t win a prize. So we began sorting the good suggestions by category and will send them (or copies) out this week to the government agencies, institutions and other authorities in charge of the areas our consultants would like to improve, with the hope that some ideas will be implemented. Sometimes, of course, the client rejects the consultants` advice. In this case, at least, nobody can complain about the fee.
SOME OF OUR READERS MAKE NO LITTLE PLANS, EITHER Some of the ideas submitted are too big in scope or too high in cost to be immediately feasible. But they deserve Daniel Burnham Honorable Mentions anyhow because he made no little plans, either.
Among the entries were many large plans for Navy Pier and massive cleanups for the city and its neighborhoods. Dozens presented ambitious schemes for tours, information centers and commercial development of Chicago`s many ethnic neighborhoods. Historic-park proposals also abounded, from rebuilding Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable`s original cabin to a lakefront park that calls for several square blocks of re-created historical edifices, including Ft. Dearborn. And more than a few want Chicago to build itself a mountain, an island in the lake-or both.
Louise McDermott of Chicago would like the city to build a museum/
restaurant/convention complex on the site of the old Stockyards, including a replica of the old yards with livestock to remind visitors of its importance to Chicago history.
Elizabeth Kimmey of Ingleside would like the hotel and restaurant associations to cooperate in promoting Chicago as the annual convention center for all veterans` groups, including a computerized reservation system that would allow participants to hook up with their individual units or years of service.
Karen Wehman of Chicago wants the city and O`Hare International Airport to sponsor an international, low-flying jet plane race around the world, including a flyover of Chicago.
Frank J. Perhats of Barrington suggests that the Sears Tower should fly the world`s biggest flag on top, on a special pole that would place the flag above the antennas.
Liz Worth of Palatine would like Chicago-area citizens to cooperate in a massive project to replant vacant lots, backyard gardens and open land with original prairie plants.
Ted Butterman of Chicago suggests a (Harold) ”Washington Monument” for Washington Park on the South Side. It would be a smaller version of the obelisk in Washington, D.C.
G.E. Campbell of Chicago wants the city to host the soccer World`s Cup competition in 1994.
Ray Geweke of Wausau, Wis., wants each ethnic neighborhood in Chicago to create its own shopping area featuring goods, crafts and food of their heritage, as Chinatown and the German shopping strip on Lincoln Avenue have done.
Michael Turik of Villa Park would like to see an artificially created recreational lake on the West Side of Chicago. ”The need for recreational opportunities is greater the further one lives from Lake Michigan,” he says. Elizabeth P. Goyak of Matteson has an ingenious plan for turning Stony Island Avenue into an expressway to ease congestion on the I-57-Dan Ryan route by widening the viaduct at 95th Street, creation of pedestrian crossings and changes in traffic signals.
Victor Bahr of Chicago calls for a Frank Lloyd Wright museum to be built in downtown Chicago, and Royal N. Britton of Chicago argues for a Museum of Modern Architecture for a city with such a rich architectural heritage.
James M. Walton-Myers has an elaborate plan for an annual world-class arts festival. Each year would be devoted to a single theme. His example is Romeo and Juliet, which could be explored through theater, music, dance, opera and film. ”For the second year? Well, there`s always Faust!” he concludes.
Lawrence Busking of Chicago began his idea with the best: Daniel Burnham himself. Busking reminds us that Burnham`s 1909 plan covered much more than the lakefront, and he directs our attention to the Lake Calumet region, where he presents his own purloined grand plan, including a recreation area and wetland preserve like that near Kennedy Airport in New York; Ravinia South, a music park in the Palos area preserves; a hiking-trail Prairie Path on abandoned railroad right-of-way; and ”Mt. Trashmore,” ski slopes laid on landfill hills.
But not all the big ideas involved construction:
Violet M. Clark of Chicago would improve the public school system by issuing monetary incentives for parents of public school children who have not finished their education to study for a GED themselves, with a cash reward for completing the study and more for further education. ”This program would enable parents to assist their children with school work. It would stress the fact that education is for children and adults . . . and enable parents to be positive role models for their children.”
Bruce Nelson of Wilmette would solve the homeless problem by having private social-service agencies manage empty CHA properties, renovate them and move in homeless people, eventually expanding to ”other abandoned, tax-delinquent or condemned properties.”
Nancy Hull Mast of Libertyville offers an idea from Washington, D.C. Her
”Adopt a Family” program pairs a middle-class family with one not so fortunate. ”Family A adopts family B in the sense that it provides advice and counsel and friendship-everything from practice for job interviews to babysitting-while family B gets on its feet. No charge to family B, no great expense except time and caring for family A. When family B gets on its feet, it adopts family C to make the program self-perpetuating.”
Mark Letton of Alsip presents a substitute parenting program adopted from Augsburg, West Germany. Retirees over 65 are given housing in a special complex and all necessities in exchange for acting as foster parents to troubled or parentless children.
Christine Topoulos of Chicago offers a jobs busing program to ”bring unemployed city folk, especially young people, to available jobs in the suburbs. The commuting time is used for classes to help these people learn and succeed on their new jobs.”
