Dear Chicago Children’s Museum,
Look, I hate Navy Pier as much as the next guy. I don’t blame you for deciding to blow that joint. You’re probably tired of the insane parking rates.
However, I am puzzled by the theory that the Chicago Children’s Museum must move to Grant Park, and only Grant Park. I gather from your supporters that if you are prevented from building an approximately 100,000-square-foot, largely subterranean museum at Daley Bicentennial Plaza, the children of Chicago will be irrevocably harmed. Perhaps they’ll be forced to snack on lead paint chips and play exclusively with recalled toys made in China. A mob of uppity rich people from East Randolph Street and the developing Lakeshore East will wrest control of Grant Park in a bloody midnight coup.
You’ve successfully turned the narrative of this issue, as the spin doctors would say, into “poor children of Chicago versus rich selfish high-rise dwellers.”
Mayor Richard Daley got in on it too with one of his trademark nutty rants: “You mean you don’t want children from the city in Grant Park? Why? Are they black?”
To buy into that scenario, one must believe some manifestly untrue points:
– that the Children’s Museum is and will be largely patronized by needy children, rather than the mainly middle-class and wealthy people one generally sees there;
– that the Museum of Science and Industry and the Field Museum don’t offer vastly superior exhibits for children, anyway;
– that no other parcel of land in the entire city is available;
– that when Grant Park was declared “Forever open, clear and free” in 1836, a declaration buttressed by four subsequent Illinois Supreme Court rulings, they just forgot to add “except the Chicago Children’s Museum”;
– that the only possible reason to oppose the Grant Park move, then, is to keep underprivileged kids away from high-rise dwellers, which is simply code for keeping blacks away from rich whites;
– that the Children’s Museum is not itself an institution backed by extremely wealthy and clout-heavy people — even though Allstate Insurance Co. has already pledged $15 million toward construction of a new home and the museum’s chairman is Gigi Pritzker Pucker.
Perhaps the real narrative here is: well-connected institution and its ultrawealthy backers versus anyone who stands in their way.
First the Children’s Museum got the nod from Daley to take over Daley Bicentennial Plaza, in the northeast corner of Grant Park.
Enough people objected by May 2006 to persuade even then-Ald. Burton Natarus, notoriously pro-development, to oppose the museum move.
Instead, Daley announced in September 2006 that the museum would move farther south in Grant Park to Monroe Street and Columbus Drive, farther away from the wrath of Randolph Street neighbors.
Children’s Museum, you obviously have clout. Now don’t be modest, admit it! Few institutions could persuade Daley to give them a second spot in Grant Park.
But as the Tribune pointed out in a Sept. 2 editorial: Ever since 1836, “well-intentioned citizens have coveted parts of Grant Park for the fulfillment of each generation’s grand civic dreams.”
“And there is only one reason the Children’s Museum can even imagine its new buildings in the park’s unobstructed space:
“Because for 171 years, special protections have stopped influential people and civic groups from intruding on that sacred space.”
Influential people … like Gigi Pritzker Pucker, perhaps?
No doubt she would enjoy having the museum next door to one of her family’s other prominent Chicago landmarks, Millennium Park’s Jay Pritzker Pavilion. Millennium Park has made Grant Park a more chic destination these days than, say, Navy Pier.
So, here’s the problem, Chicago Children’s Museum. We can’t shoehorn every worthy museum into Grant Park. Letting you in makes it that much harder to say “no” to the next Pritzker in line.
Failure to install a new tourist attraction there is characterized as capitulating to a bunch of rich, snobby high-rise tenants. If all the opposing residents on East Randolph and in Lakeshore East truly desired to simply keep out Chicago’s underprivileged hordes, this might make some sense.
In fact, no one is turned away. This park area is not a “little-used sanctum.” Neighbors report waiting up to an hour on weekends to get a child on a swing there. The skating rink is nearly as crowded as Millennium Park’s. The Bicentennial rink is free — except skate rental — and open to all comers.
Particularly in the summer, the area is used by many people who don’t live anywhere near downtown.
In contrast, Children’s Museum, you charge $8 for adults, and $8 for children for admission. That’s right, no discount for kids. Seniors save a whole dollar, paying $7.
I’m sure there must be some Bicentennial Plaza neighbors who don’t want to mix with anyone of a different background or income level. There isn’t a block in this city where you won’t find people like that. The rest of the park’s neighbors, however, have legitimate concerns about welcoming a museum already drawing about a half million people per year to an area already buzzing with traffic — and in the process of adding 15,000 new residents.
I guess it’s easy to demonize the residents of East Randolph and Lakeshore East if you don’t know any. Look how easy it is to objectify Bicentennial Plaza neighbors by referring to them as “high-rise dwellers.” Yikes! Who knows what those high-rise people are capable of? They have more money than us! They live up in the sky! They don’t have yards!
You need not worry. I have met these high-rise people. I have walked among them, sat in their lobbies, used their elevators and even broken bread with them. They are not cannibals, though they do have a predisposition for shopping at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s.
The relevant point here, however, is that these people could easily buy much larger, much more comfortable and much, much more isolated houses in the suburbs. They could pay their taxes in those suburbs, send their kids to school there and go to private beaches. They could blissfully forget about the city’s problems, driving downtown now and then in SUVs to enjoy the restaurants, theaters and museums.
Instead, they’ve chosen to throw their lot in with Chicago. They understand that cities are important, that you can’t just leave them behind like an old sweater when one piece starts unraveling.
I’m happy the high-rise people are here. But where you go next, Children’s Museum, doesn’t have anything to do with the downtown population. That’s just a red herring your avid supporters have thrown across the Grant Park trail.
The real issue is that you believe you are above the law, the one that declares Grant Park should remain open, clear and free. I don’t think that’s a very good lesson to teach Chicago children.
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Cate Plys writes a column for Beachwoodreporter.com, where a version of this essay first appeared.
