The Picasso Thing

This week during a ceremony in Daley Plaza commemorating the golden anniversary of the work of art known to every Chicagoan simply as "The Picasso", Mayor Rahm Emanuel called its introduction to the city a "critical inflection point in Chicago's story."

Almost fifty years ago to the day, that point wasn't lost upon Mike Royko, who in his Chicago Daily News column published the day after the unveiling of the fifty foot sculpture by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, called the event, not without a trace of irony, the "cultural rebirth of the city." True to his curmudgeon spirit, Royko continued:

Out there in the neighborhoods and the suburbs, things probably seemed just the same. People worried about the old things·would they move in and would we move out? Or would we move in and would they move out? 

But downtown, the leaders of culture and influence were gathered for a historical event and it was reaching a climax with Mayor Daley standing there ready to pull a ribbon. 

Thousands waited in and around the Civic (now Richard J. Daley) Center plaza.

They had listened to the speeches about the Picasso thing. They had heard how it was going to change Chicago's image.

When Mayor Richard J. Daley struggled, then finally succeeded to free the artwork from its shroud, Royko wrote that the Picasso was greeted by a spattering of applause, followed by lots of silence.

Royko, like many Chicagoans at the time, wasn't particularly taken by the sculpture.

They had hoped, you see, that it would be what they had heard it would be. 

A woman, maybe. A beautiful soaring woman. That is what many art experts and enthusiasts had promised. They had said that we should wait that we should not believe what we saw in the pictures. 

If it was a woman, then art experts should put away their books and spend more time in girlie joints.

Mike Royko was no art critic. But he was one of the best observers and chroniclers of the life and times of this city that you will ever read. He was writing at a time when this city was bitterly divided over race, class and ethnic identity which he alluded to in the column. That would all come to a head the following year as the city burned during the riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King. Royko pulled no punches when it came to describing his passionate distrust of Mayor Daley, the Chicago Democratic Political Machine, and the moneyed establishment, all of whom exerted their considerable influence upon the city and in doing so, among other less charitable things, made the Chicago Picasso possible. To him, the Picasso was nothing more than a bone the powers-that-be threw at the people of this city, a silver lining within a cloud of greed, corruption and arrogance that controlled Chicago. And Royko famously made a living out of pointing out, as Jerry Garcia once sang, that every silver lining has a touch of gray. On someone's comment that the Picasso captured the "spirit of Chicago", Royko picked up on that point and ran with it:

...from thousands of miles away, accidentally or on purpose, Picasso captured it. 

Up there in that ugly face is the spirit of Al Capone, the Summerdale scandal cops, the settlers who took the Indians but good. 

Its eyes are like the eyes of every slum owner who made a buck off the small and weak. And of every building inspector who took a wad from a slum owner to make it all possible... 

It has the look of the big corporate executive who comes face to face with the reality of how much water pollution his company is responsible for and then thinks of the profit and loss and of his salary. 

It is all there in that Picasso thing the I Will spirit. The I will get you before you will get me spirit. 

Picasso has never been here, they say. You'd think he's been riding the L all his life.

I suppose few Chicagoans at the time read that deeply into the Picasso; they just shook their heads and failed to see what all the fuss was about. After all, to them it was just a big pile of rusty metal that didn't really look like much of anything recognizable.

Fifty years almost to the day after its unveiling, the rusty Cor-Ten steel of both the sculpture and the building it stands in front of, has developed as promised, a lovely rich, deep bronze patina, Today taken out of the context of the time, Royko's words and the feelings of the average Chicagoan sound philistine and sacrilege. The Picasso is every much as beloved, and part of Chicago's iconography as the lakefront, the Water Tower, the Chicago Theater marquee, the Wrigley Building, and the Marshall Field clocks.

Just as most locals never set foot inside the Art Institute, Symphony Center, or other institutions of so called "high culture", I dare say that Chicagoans deep down consider the Picasso if not beautiful, at least something to be immensely proud of. Just as those esteemed institutions, the Picasso has put this city on the map of respectability. After all, being regarded only as the city of  hog butchering, Al Capone rat-a-tat-tat, and corrupt politicians, gets a little old.

Young man "owning" the Picasso

If you don't obsess over the silly question of what it is supposed to represent, the Chicago Picasso is indeed, to my eyes anyway, a beautiful object in its own right. The form of its graceful, sensuous lines set against the ninety degree angles of the surrounding buildings creates a powerful study in contrast, especially when the light is just right. But that's only the half of it. The Chicago Picasso has done what none of the other great works of public art that were inspired by it have managed to do. It has become part of the urban fabric, and in doing so, has transcended its role as a work of art.

When you think of objects of art in a museum, chances are you take them dead seriously, your immediate reaction is to look and not touch. If that thought doesn't happen to occur to you, there are guards to remind you. Likewise, for a while, the Picasso was cordoned off with chains so you could not get too close, presumably to prevent the natural inclination of children sliding down its base. Removing those barriers played a big role in humanizing the work.

In his speech the other day, Mayor Emanuel said the Picasso belongs to all of us, and that is certainly true. Today without the chains, day and night you can see children and adults as well, using the sculpture as if it were an enormous playground apparatus. It's hard to imagine that Pablo Picasso, himself a child at heart, would have objected. Less exhilarating but equally poignant is the crevice underneath the base which serves at times as a shelter for homeless people.

Daley Plaza, Chicago's agora, is hands down the city's most democratic public gathering space. True to the democratic nature of the place, during his speech the other day at the foot of the Picasso, there were demonstrators shouting Mayor Emanuel down.

As Daley Plaza's centerpiece, the Picasso has borne witness to important moments in this city's history for the last half century. Joy, tragedy, exaltation, frustration, anxiety, hope, and every other imaginable emotion have all played out in front of the sculpture. The plaza is the site of political rallies, demonstrations, celebrations, memorial services, ethnic festivals, a wide range of musical and dance performances, farmers markets and the annual Kristkindlmarkt, the most authentic German Christmas market anywhere this side of the Maginot Line.

In 1983 I was in front of the Picasso at a pep rally for the Chicago White Sox who were about to enter the post-season for the first time in my memory. Four years later I was there when the official announcement was made that Mayor Harold Washington had just died. A few weeks later I was present in the plaza as Eugene Sawyer, a good man who was appointed mayor by the City Council in the most shameful of ways, lit the city's official Christmas tree. I saw Lech Wałęsa there in 1989, soon after he led Poland to a peaceful revolution from its Soviet subjugation. I was there in the late seventies when Iranian students demanded that the Shah be ousted from power. I attended many more events, both happy and sad, at the plaza, that have faded into the recesses of my memory, save for the presence of the great statue and its somewhat ironic role  (given its iconoclastic origin) as a stabilizing force mediating the array of events taking place around it.

Today as we read and hear stories of the anniversary, reporters are still eliciting opinions from passersby over what they think the Picasso represents. For all his shortcomings, miscues and malaprops, Richard Daley the Elder set everybody straight when he said, hitting the nail right on the head: "with modern art, you're just supposed to use your imagination."

At the unveiling fifty years ago this coming Tuesday, either Daley, or his speechwriter came up with another remarkably prescient line:

We dedicate this celebrated work this morning with the belief that what is strange to us today will be familiar tomorrow.

Powerful words spoken by a man not known for profound utterances, how can it be you may ask that Richard J. Daley of all people, son and lifelong resident of the once hardscrapple, provincial neighborhood of Bridgeport, was instrumental in bringing the Picasso to Chicago?        

Daley prided himself on being a builder and Chicago is filled for better or worse, with roads, bridges, buildings, projects, institutions and monuments that are the direct result of his power and influence over his twenty one year reign as mayor of Chicago. In that respect, he was no different from other big city mayors of the fifties, sixties and seventies. Speaking from experience having lived through the era, people back then had a profound faith in the new; in those days the word "modern" was an unequivocally positive term.  No matter how banal, uninspiring, or purely awful it may have been, anything modern was unfailingly preferable to anything old. That is precisely why there was so little objection to the wanton destruction of some of Chicago's greatest buildings during that era, virtually all of them replaced by vastly inferior modern buildings.

That the Picasso was strange or didn't conform to Daley's expectations of what art should be didn't matter in the least, the fact that it was important and new was all he cared about. When he became mayor in 1955, Richard J. Daley could very well have not known Pablo Picasso from a hole in the ground, but shortly after learning that Picasso was the most important Modern artist around, Daley became the artist's biggest Chicago benefactor. And Picasso returned the favor.

The story goes that the architect William Hartmann of the architectural firm Skidmore Owings and Merrill first approached Picasso in 1963 at his studio in Paris, Hartmann allegedly mentioned to Picasso that he was offering him a "site for the most important piece of sculpture in the United States." Never known for a small ego, those words were music to Picasso's ears. Back in Chicago, a man of no small ego himself, Daley was quite pleased, giddy in fact when Hartmann relayed the story that Picasso asked him if Mayor Daley was still in charge of Chicago. Despite the fact that they never met in person, it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Hartmann reportedly offered the artist a check for a cool $100,000 for his efforts, which Picasso turned down. The sculpture would be Pablo Picasso's gift to the people of Chicago.

The work itself was the result of several years of sketches and three dimensional maquettes, some of which were displayed at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1966. While the exhibition wasn't overwhelmingly attended, word got out that this would not be your grandfather's public monument. There was a bit of resistance to the construction of what for the time was a groundbreaking project. One alderman, a Republican of course, famously suggested that a statue of Chicago Cubs star Ernie Banks be erected instead. There were also rumblings about Picasso's communist sympathies. But Mayor Daley put his foot down and insisted the project go forward, reportedly saying: "Leave the art to the artists, and the politics to the politicians."

Maquette and preliminary drawing of Chicago Picasso
that were exhibited at the Art Institute in 1966,
one year before the unveiling of the sculpture

In the end, it may seem impertinent to lump Chicago's Picasso with the expressways, universities, housing projects and all the other major public works projects built under Mayor Daley's watch, but there it is. Richard J. Daley forever changed the face of Chicago and not all of it for the good. Mike Royko was right about Daley about 95 percent of the time, but he fell a little short with the Picasso thing. It is a piece that defies categories. It can be whatever the viewer wants it to be. To Royko it may have been a metaphor for all that was evil and corrupt about the city. Conversely, it could be a beautiful object representing the more edifying aspects of the spirit of Chicago.  Or if you are so inclined, it could simply represent a woman, an Afghan Hound, a horse an insect, or most likely all the above. Like all good art, it makes you stop and ponder. You may not have the answer but sometimes all that's important are the questions.

Beyond its own merits, the Chicago Picasso opened the door, the flood gates actually, for public arts projects to flourish all across the city and the country. Ironically in this, the "year of public art", officially proclaimed by the current mayor in honor of the anniversary, we are learning of the possibility that some of the works of art mentioned by Rahm Emanuel in his speech in front of the Picasso, are themselves endangered, either by the elements, or by removal. It turns out that of all the works of public art in Chicago, only the Daley Center Picasso is protected by landmark status, ensuring that kids of all ages generations from now, will still be able to slide down its base, and that it will continue to stand watch over the ebbs and tides of the flowing river of Chicago history.

It didn't happen very often in this town, but in the case of the Chicago Picasso, Mayor Daley got the last laugh. This coming Tuesday morning, the fiftieth anniversary of the unveiling, I'll be looking toward the sky and tipping my hat to Hizzoner.

Ya done good with this one Mr. Mayor, real good.

Who Owns the Universe?

The other rite of spring: earlier this month, Preservation Chicago released its annual list of the seven most endangered buildings in Chicago. According to Ward Miller, the executive director of the advocacy group, the list is released every year in early March, to coincide with the anniversary the founding of the city, which in Ward's words: "...is a significant time because these buildings tie to the city’s history."

One of the seven items on this year's list is not a building at all, but Chicago's 20th century public sculpture. All of it, with the exception of the iconic Picasso Sculpture in Daley Plaza, surprisingly is not protected by landmark status. I say surprisingly because one of the bullet points civic boosters (including Miller) like to use in defense of their argument that Chicago is a "world class city" is indeed this city's vast treasure trove of public sculpture.

As the entry on public sculpture on Preservation Chicago's list of threatened works points out, we have already lost a good number of significant works of public art including a Henry Moore sculpture that once stood in the lobby of Three First National Bank Plaza. That sculpture was sold at auction last year, presumably being removed forever from public view. Some notable works have been compromised such as the Harry Bertoia kinetic sculpture in AON Plaza, which was broken up and reassembled in greatly diminished form when the plaza was reconfigured in 1994. Other important works are in desperate shape, most notably Marc Chagall's mosaic sculpture, The Four Seasons, which has been severely damaged by the natural elements it represents.

Since the list was released, in barely the blink of an eye, one of the pieces mentioned, Universe, by Alexander Calder, which has stood in the lobby of the former Sears Tower for over forty years. began to be dismantled, and is now headed toward an unknown future.

Universe, by Alexander Calder, which at this writing,
is being removed from the lobby of Willis (formerly Sears) Tower.
This photograph was made in 2009, shortly after the name change of the building.

This whimsical mechanized mobile, consists of geometric shapes representing the sun, the moon and the stars, as well as organic elements from terra firma. Each piece is meant to be in constant motion with the elements moving independently, meaning that theoretically, the objects are never in exactly the same relationship to each other, just as the objects in the universe, (get it?). Unfortunately, quite often the motors used to animate the piece weren't turned on consistently so the entire point of the sculpture was lost on the tens of thousands of visitors who passed by it every day. 

The Calder sculpture was considered by many to be the one saving grace of the lobby of the behemoth building in the west Loop, which despite several attempts at re-design, remains desperately cold and uninspiring. The latest attempt to make Sears/Willis Tower meet the ground in a kinder, gentler manner, (as well as providing extra retail and other revenue-generating space), was announced to the public earlier this year. The design presented by the building's new owner, The Blackstone Group, an investment firm based in New York City, will feature an entirely separate structure that will wrap around the first four stories of the tower, doing away with the current wind-swept plaza whose level base gracelessly encounters the street grade as it rises to the level of the bridges crossing the Chicago River one block west. This is how the entrance to Sears Tower looks today:

The Wacker Drive entrance to Sears/Willis Tower as it looks today from Adams Street.
The barrier wall, part of the original 1974 design, the awkward barrel-vaulted entrance, stuck on in 1985,
and the globe which appeared in 2010, will soon be be counted, along with Alexander Calder's Universe,
among the artifacts of Lost Chicago.

A rendering of the new entrance can be found here in Blair Kamin's Chicago Tribune piece on the new structure.. Careful observers at the public announcement of the new design were quick to notice that nowhere in the new plan did there seem to be any provision for the Calder. Mayor Rahm Emanuel who attended the presentation, remained mum when asked about plans for the sculpture. Ironically, Emanuel proclaimed 2017, the "Year of Public Art" in Chicago.

At this point it may be useful to ask this question: what exactly is public art? Obvious examples are the aforementioned Daley Center Picasso, and Chicago's other Calder, The Flamingo, which not coincidentally was unveiled on the same day in 1974 as Universe.  Both The Flamingo and the Picasso are owned by the public, and they sit atop public space on public land.

Here are Preservation Chicago's recommendations for Chicago's public art:

Preservation Chicago believes that these works of art should be protected and always on public display. Additionally, these works of art are contextual and were designed to be viewed in situ, so to the extent possible, should remain in their original environment. The loss of any of these art pieces is tragic, and we suggest that these public and private works of art, with public access, and on open plazas and semi-public spaces, be considered for thematic Chicago Landmark Designation along with their plazas and open spaces, to guarantee that they will always be here for the public good. 

Fair enough. It gets tricky however when you deal with a privately owned work of art that sits on or inside private property, but is still accessible to the general public, which is the case with Calder's Universe. Should a work of art be like a building owned by a private entity, whose owners have the right (assuming landmark protections do not apply), to do whatever they please with it? 

The answer to that question is not as cut and dried as you might expect. Most folks I assume would believe that, as a matter of principle, the owner of a work of art has every right to display it or not. Heck, even the Art Institute took down the much beloved stained glass windows of Marc Chagall for a number of years (because the director at the time didn't like them), much to the consternation of many of the museum's patrons. When they finally returned on display, the windows ended up stuck in a remote corner of the museum rather their former place of prominence, thereby losing much of their context.

So what about a privately owned site-specific work of art such as Universe? Preservation Chicago argues about the importance of the context of specific works of art, but what happens to the art when the owner of a building decides to modify the space where the art resides? From the renderings of the new entrance to Sears/Willis Tower, it appears that the new space does not even provide the ample clearance necessary to display the piece let alone the original context for which the piece was intended.

Logic would seem to rule in favor of the owners who would face an unreasonable burden to insure that they would need to work around the requirements of existing works of art, whenever they perform what they deem to be necessary alterations to their buildings.

On the other hand, in the seventies and eighties, it was common practice for the city to offer zoning and tax breaks, as well as other perks to encourage developers to create open spaces populated with works of art. Given that, it would seem that the owners of these buildings would have some sort of obligation to the public to maintain those works of art.

Now suppose the original owners, the beneficiaries of those perks. are long gone. Are owners a few generations removed, obligated to maintain their art, and its context, into perpetuity?

Another case brought up by the Preservation Chicago piece is the Jean Dubuffet sculpture called "Monument with Standing Beast", outside of the James R, Thompson Center in the Loop. Like the Picasso and The Flamingo, the Dubuffet sculpture is publicly owned and sits on public land. Unfortunately the government is considering selling the building and the property upon which it stands. Would the new owners be obligated to preserve this piece in situ? Logic would tell us probably not. If the Thompson Center is demolished, (a distinct and unfortunate possibility), that sculpture would have lost its context anyway.

Even Calder's Flamingo is considered endangered, as the Federal Government who operates the plaza where the sculpture resides, is considering consolidating all of their operations into one of the three buildings on the site and selling off the plaza to private concerns. Arguably no piece of public art in Chicago is more tightly connected to its context than the bright red organic curves of that Calder work which perfectly compliments the rigid black and white geometry of the Mies van der Rohe Federal Center. Its loss would be a devastating blow to the city.

So where does that leave us?

Clearly there is a conflict between the "public good" and private property rights. Even our strapped-for-cash government seems to be unmoved by the question of public art. I'm sorry but I don't have a clear answer to this complicated matter.

Even if we wanted to, we probably can't pass a law to insure that all of our works of public art, whether they be publicly or privately owned, be maintained and preserved in the context in which they were intended.

Short of that, it would seem that the best solution is to provide every incentive to the owners of Chicago's tremendous collection of public art, including the government at all levels, to look at the big picture. If Chicago is to be a world class city (whatever that means), then it must lead the way culturally as well as economically.

It seems that when we led the nation in encouraging the creation of public art in our city forty years ago, we got it, but somewhere between then and now, we lost our way.

Friends of the Parks

The advocacy group Friends of the Parks, has gotten a lot of flack lately for their efforts to block the building of the much ballyhooed George Lucas museum on Chicago's lakefront. They've been called an elitist organization out of touch with the needs of the city, chastised for their (in the views of some), myopic view that the lakefront is to remain forever inviolate at all costs. It has even been suggested that the organization is racist because of their perceived obstructionist stance against development and the possible opportunities that development would bring to, in the words of Mellody Hobson, the wife of George Lucas, "the black and brown children of Chicago."

I expressed the opinion in my previous post that the construction of the museum on what is now the Soldier Field parking lot would not be so horrible as the stretch between the Field Museum and McCormick Place is already loaded with institutions that intrude upon the lakefront in one form or other, so what harm would there be in one more.

I also stated that FoP is fighting a battle of principle here, and that battles of principles are worth fighting, they're just not always worth winning.

Therefore I unequivocally support Friends of the Parks' efforts to do the job spelled out in their mission statement:

...to preserve, protect, improve and promote the use of parks and open spaces throughout the Chicago area for the enjoyment of all residents and visitors.

This is a fact the mayor, the Lucases and all the supporters of the museum need to understand. If they are truly committed to building the museum in Chicago, they need to be willing to sit down and listen to lakefront advocacy groups such as Friends of the Parks, who do in fact have legal precedent on their side, and work out a plan that will benefit all the citizens of Chicago, not just the egos of a couple of billionaires.

Washington Park

View of Washington park looking toward South Open Green

I've spent a lot of my life in Chicago's parks. Ever since I first laid eyes on the magnificent sculpture by Loredo Taft, known as The Fountain of Time, there's always been a soft spot in my heart for Washington Park on the south side. I got to know the park in earnest in the mid-nineties when I began my extensive photographic survey of the parks of Chicago. Of all the landscape parks of this city, Washington stands apart in its great expanses. The field seen in the photograph above, originally called South Open Green, (today officially referred to as "Common Ground" Meadow), is certainly the widest expanse of open land in all the city's parks. As you can see, ball fields occupy the meadow as they have for nearly 150 years, ever since Paul Cornell, the founder of the community of Hyde Park who originally laid out Washington Park, convinced landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted to put them there. In addition to the numerous baseball, softball, and football leagues that play their games in the meadow, Chicago's premier cricket league also calls the meadow it's home.

The biggest event the park hosts, is the picnic that follows the annual Bud Billiken parade which terminates in Washington Park. On any given weekend during the warmer months, you'll find it brimming with humanity in this, one of Chicago's loveliest parks.

But not today on a frigid late February afternoon, where aside from a couple of joggers and one solitary gentleman on foot, my only companions were a pair of cardinals and a few dozen black-capped chickadees, gleefully chirping and flitting from branch to ground and back, keeping me company.

With a fresh blanket of snow on a bright winter day like today, a park will reveal itself in ways it cannot during the summer when foliage and people are around. Being able to see from one end to the other, the landscape architects' work becomes readily apparent. Here you begin to understand that the great meadow is not just a flat patch of open land, but a carefully planned clearing, arranged brilliantly within the context of the rest of the park. Setting the meadow apart from the city to the west, is a ribbon of contoured land forms called berms. This undulating landscape, subtle as it is, serves two purposes. From the inside, it keeps the city beyond the park, with its visual clutter and traffic noise, out. From the outside, by hiding the ball fields within, it emphatically states to the world that this is first and foremost a landscape park, not a playground.

Section of Washington Park included in the University of Chicago bid for Obama Presidential Library

I'm afraid we don't put too much importance into the role of the urban landscape park anymore. To the designers of nineteenth century parks like this one, there was a premium put on open space in a naturalistic setting, intended for nothing more than walking or sitting, a place to get away from the frenetic activity of the city, including throngs of people. Today, big parks occupied by few people are seen as wasted space. Newer parks like Millennium Park and the new Maggie Daley Park downtown, cram as many activities, and people, as possible within their boundaries.The overall design effect is a jumble, not altogether different from an amusement park. Landscape parks if they're successful, give us a unified design with one feature effortlessly flowing into the next. New York's Central Park is a good example. Prospect Park in Brooklyn is even better. Not surprisingly, those two magnificent parks were designed by the same team of architects who designed Washington Park, Olmsted and Calvert Vaux.

The ribbon of berms, trees and walkways on the western edge of Washington Park that Olmsted and Vaux carefully designed, about twenty acres in all, is in itself the size of a small park. This is the section of the park that Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has offered to swap with the Park District for vacant city property, so it can be lumped together with nearby property as part of a bid for the Barack Obama Presidential Library. The board of the Chicago Park District, following the mayor lock, stock, and barrel, has agreed to carve up Washington Park. It hasn't been disclosed exactly how the western edge of Washington Park would be used in the proposed design, but if built, it would definitely change the character of the entire park.

It's easy to see why this patch of park land is coveted by the planners of the bid. Just west of the park, on the other side of King Drive, lie acres of vacant land, much of it owned by the University of Chicago, the sponsors of the bid. The site is perfectly situated in terms of transportation, less than a mile away from the Dan Ryan Expressway and directly underneath a CTA elevated station. While the available land is large enough to build a sizable building for

Vacant land immediately west of Washington Park

the presidential library, there may not be enough real estate necessary for the inevitable parking requirements, not to mention the landscaping around the library building that seems to obligatory as far as these things go. As others have pointed out, underground parking, similar to what currently exists at the Museum of Science and Industry, might solve that problem, and the willingness to scale back on the footprint of the entire library complex, would make this site feasible without intruding on Washington Park. There is also additional vacant land directly south of the site, across Garfield Park, just visible on the right of the photo that could possibly be incorporated in the design of the library complex.

I mentioned in the previous post, my opposition to taking over any part of Washington Park for the site of the library on the grounds that public land should not be surrendered for a private venture. In the case of this park, it's completely ridiculous to suggest that real estate located elsewhere could possibly make up for the loss of existing parkland that as we have seen, plays an integral role in the design of the rest of the park.

Furthermore, Washington Park has great significance to this city, as testified by its listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Unfortunately that distinction carries no weight as far as preservation is concerned, and as our mayor has shown before, he has no qualms about running roughshod over preservation issues regarding this city's architectural treasures.

They say that all politics is local yet in an interesting turn, this issue may be a 180 degree reversal of that old axiom. In a few weeks time, the president will have the final say about the location of his legacy library. That decision will more than likely be made before the runoff mayoral election between Emanuel and his opponent Jesus Garcia in April. I imagine it would be a tremendous slap in the face to the mayor if Obama chooses New York or Honolulu over Chicago, especially coming right before the election involving that president's former Chief of Staff. If that should occur, you can bet Garcia will make hay of the fact that the mayor couldn't bring home a prize that many in this town think is rightfully ours.

The land grab of public property that the mayor is advocating, is controversial, and it may be subject to law suits. If those suits become a reality, they could very well become the deciding factor that kills Chicago's chances for getting the presidential library.

And if that comes to pass, Garcia would indeed have a point that by not coming up with a more workable plan, Emanuel blew our chance of getting the library. Who knows, that might even be just enough ammunition to swing the election Garcia's way.

I'm on the fence right now but there are certainly loads of people in this city right now who would love to see Garcia become Chicago's first Latino mayor. They just may get their chance.

And Rahm Emanuel will have only himself to blame.

Upping the ante

Responding to Brad Stevens, the mayor of Rosemont, Illinois who just offered the Chicago Cubs a 25 acre site gratis, along with other perks to build a new ballpark in his town, an aide to Mayor Emanuel said this: “The idea that the Cubs would leave Wrigley Field is not something to be taken seriously.”

I wouldn't be so sure. As beloved as the friendly confines of Wrigley Field may be, it has plenty of detractors. Folks claim that it's hard to get to, especially by car, difficult to get in and out of, has terrible food, dirty bathrooms, bad facilities for the players, it's old and falling apart; in short: "it's a dump." There are in fact many voices out there who for years have called for the team to relocate into a new facility either in the city or the suburbs, where much of the fan base resides.

Tom Ricketts who along with his family owns the Cubs and Wrigley Field, seems committed at the moment to keeping the team in the old ballpark. In that vein, the Ricketts family proposes a major overhaul of the 99 year old cathedral of baseball to bring it up as well as possible, to current standards, while preserving its intimate character. The price tag for such a renovation would be in the neighborhood of 300 million dollars, all of which would be funded through private capital. By not demanding the municipality pay for, or even share in the burden of the project, the family Ricketts is doing something almost unheard of in this day and age of public spending on sports arenas. True, AT&T Park in San Francisco was built privately, but in a time and a place, (the Bay Area in the 1990's) that was flush with capital. The same cannot be said of Chicago, 2013. One would think that everyone in the city with the exception of die hard baseball haters (and maybe a handful of disgruntled White Sox fans) would jump at the chance to keep the Cubs in Chicago without costing the taxpayers a dime.

Not so. To help raise capital for the renovation, the family is asking that some zoning restrictions be lifted in regards to advertising, night games, as well as certain landmarks restrictions relating to the design of the ballpark. Community groups with the help of 44th Ward alderman Tom Tunney, are looking to stall the plans siting parking issues, police protection and “aesthetic” issues regarding the ballpark. But it seems the real stumbling block are the owners of the properties across Waveland and Sheffield Avenues from the ballpark who have constructed bleachers on top of their buildings for the expressed purpose of selling tickets (at about 100 bucks a pop) to watch Cubs games. They are afraid that the proposed advertising structures in the outfield would obstruct the views of the field from their "Wrigley Rooftop" seats.

In case you were wondering, no they're not getting that view for nothing. In an agreement brokered by Alderman Tunney, the rooftop owners fork over seventeen percent of their profits to the Cubs in exchange for the club not building a wall obstructing their view. Connie Mack did precisely that in Philadelphia in 1935 when his Athletics lost revenue due to fans watching from the roofs across the street instead of inside his ballpark. Needless to say, the Wrigley rooftop owners have a sweet deal and aren't going to let go of it without a fight, and Tom Tunney is their staunchest advocate. Not surprisingly, the rooftop owners have given Tunney's campaign fund a generous amount of money over the years. Could that be related to Tunney's foot dragging in the Wrigley renovation plans?

You mean a Chicago politician with an ulterior motive...  perish the thought!

Tom Ricketts would like a deal with Tunney and the city finalized by Opening Day if not sooner in order for work on the ballpark to begin by the end of this coming season. For his part Mayor Emanuel understandably wants a deal made, and now. “Yeah, but it’s not going to be on the backs of my community, sorry..." says a defiant Tunney, the man of the people. Adding to his demagoguery, Tunney made this pointless observation about the Rickettses: "You’re talking about one of the wealthiest families in America."

To hear the rooftop owners talk about it, you'd think it was they who are responsible for the Cubs' success and not the other way around. "There's a reason that the Cubs pull (in crowds)," said Beth Murphy, one of the rooftop owners. "I believe it's the synergy between the neighborhood and the ballpark."

Apparently it's inconceivable to them and many other defenders of Wrigley Field, that the Cubs might one day leave the "Friendly Confines."

Here's a brief history lesson:

The late forties and fifties were the golden age of baseball in New York City. There were three teams in the city back in those days when it was rare if the World Series did not feature at least one New York  team. In 1951 all three New York teams finished in first place. Perhaps the greatest year of all was 1955 when the Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Yankees to win their first championship. The same two teams met the following year in the Fall Classic when the team from the Bronx won.

Then the unthinkable happened. Despite their tremendous popularity, despite their success on the field, and despite boasting the names of immortals like Mays, Thompson,  Reese, Snyder, and Robinson, nobody came to the games, at least not in Brooklyn nor up in the Polo Grounds where the Giants played.  Walter O'Malley, then owner of the Dodgers desperately tried to get the city to help build a new ballpark to replace Ebbets Field, the beloved but run down ballpark in a run down neighborhood. The city was unmoved. It so happened that there was a tremendous market out west just waiting to be exploited but O'Malley could only move his team to California if another team relocated to the Golden State. O'Mally had little trouble convincing Horace Stoneham the principal owner of the Giants, to join him. So in 1958, both the Dodgers and the Giants left New York City for greener pastures. The move which was a huge boon to both teams and their new cities, left a tremendous void in New York, especially in Brooklyn.

So far Tom Ricketts has not publicly expressed interest in Rosemont's overtures to the Cubs. He is sticking to his April 1st deadline for the city to work out a deal. Short of that, everything may be up for grabs. Perhaps the Rosemont proposal will be just a bargaining chip. Wrigley Field certainly has a draw that a new facility would not. I've gone on the record and am sticking to my belief that the Cubs would be foolish to leave Wrigley Field. On the other hand, there are unavoidable issues that need to be addressed, first and foremost of them is safety. Wrigley Field has outlasted its life expectancy by at least fifty years; it was not built to last forever and its infrastructure is in desperate need of repair. Secondly, while it's difficult to feel sorry for multi-millionaire ballplayers, the training and workout facilities for them at Wrigley are woefully inadequate and the team needs to face the issue if it expects to compete for elite players in the future. The other issues which involve fan comfort and distractions have no interest to me, but they do for other people and need to be addressed. Plans are in place to address these issues right here in Chicago and at Wrigley Field, the only obstacle appears to be the arrogance, intransigence, and short sightedness of a small group of people, and a politician who appears beholden to them. If the alderman continues his stonewalling, the team may have no alternative other than packing their bags.

Unlike other local institutions such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra or the Art Institute, the Cubs are a privately owned business, not a non-for-profit entity. The Ricketts family does not owe it to Chicago to keep its team in the city; they have the right to look at every option open to them. If they should decide to move the team out of Chicago, to a place where they feel their business has a better chance of thriving, that too is their right, it's their team after all. Chicago has nothing to gain by not working out a deal with the Cubs, and everything to lose.

After the Cubs move on to Rosemont, Arlington Heights, Shaumburg or beyond, we can look forward to the Wrigley Condominiums at the corner of Clark and Addison, surrounding a lovely little park. There will be a plaque marking the former location of home plate where Babe Ruth allegedly called his home run shot in the 1932 World Series, and from where Gabby Hartnett hit his "Homer in the Gloamin'" to help the Cubs win the National League pennant in 1938. Maybe there will be another marker at the pitcher's mound site where Fergie Jenkins once worked, and another at short where Ernie Banks first broke into the big leagues. There'll be a little piece of the outfield wall covered with the ivy that Bill Veeck planted, where Jose Cardinal "lost" several balls hit in his direction. If they're smart, perhaps they'll even build a Little League ballpark on the site of the old diamond for the use of the little tikes who live in the condos.

One thing is for sure, Wrigleyville will be a much quieter place. I'm just curious how much Beth Murphy will be able to charge for a seat on her rooftop overlooking the place where the Cubs used to play.

Some thoughts on the election

In a couple of months we will have a new mayor, there is no doubt whatever about that. It looks like the days of having a Mayor Daley on the fifth floor of City Hall are gone for good. Richard M. Daley has a son but as far as I know he has not shown much interest in carrying on the family business. Many folks around town find that alone cause for celebration, the end of the Daley dynasty.

Well I for one am not jumping up and down about Mayor Daley stepping down. True his legacy has been mixed, at times he has acted more like a king than an elected official. Daley forged the City Council into a rubber stamp silencing virtually all of his adversaries. His failures, missteps and arrogance are well noted: scandal in the administration, the all or nothing attempt to bring the Olympics to Chicago, the parking meter fiasco, the failed attempt to bully Loop residents into digging up Grant Park for a Children's museum, the midnight raid on Meigs Field.

In the name of reform, the critics say, we need a mayor who is independent in order to free this city from the evil bondage of corruption, machine style politics and patronage. Richard M. Daley some critics say was every bit the old school politician as his old man. It is true that Ritchie ultimately eclipsed his legendary father Richard J. Daley, in longevity in office, and some would say in influence.

Mayor Daley the Elder was a builder, The University of Illinois Chicago Campus, O'Hare International Airport, and the system of expressways that tore up communities were all built during his administration. The face of the Loop also changed under Richard J. Daley, for better or worse. All these projects created tremendous growth and opportunity in the city. The new motto of Chicago became "The City that Works." That period was also one of the most devastating eras for the city in terms of violence, mistrust, and the irrevocable loss of valued icons and institutions.

Mayor Daley the Younger was also a builder. Anyone addressing his legacy certainly has to put Millennium Park at or near the top of the list. Despite its shortcomings, MP has to be considered an unqualified success in terms of attracting people back into the Loop. Some might site MP as an example of City Hall's concern for downtown over the rest of the city. But anyone who has ventured into parks all over the city as I have, can attest to the fact that tremendous energy and resources have been devoted to them as well. The neighborhood parks of Chicago have not been in as good a shape in decades. The current Mayor Daley has been an outspoken advocate of environmental concerns; green building, tree planting, alternative means of commuting, including by bicycle, and of course the aforementioned destruction of Meigs Field in favor of a public park, to name just a few examples.

Chicago today is also better off in another respect, it is not as racially divided as it once was. True we're not all holding hands together harmonizing; "I'd like to teach the world to sing." But the election Tuesday proved that the racial polarization that began under his father's administration and came to a full boil under Harold Washington's, has at least taken a sabbatical.

Some see this as troubling. Sun Times columnist Mary Mitchell began her post-election column this way:

"Carol Moseley Braun’s stunning defeat signals the end of the black political empowerment movement in Chicago."

Now it is certainly true that white politicians in Chicago used, manipulated, and took for granted the African American vote for decades. That came to an end when Harold Washington was elected Chicago's first black mayor in 1983. The number of voters from the black community who turned out in that election was unprecedented. Washington himself was a product of the Democratic Machine, but he went against it when he ran for mayor and was punished during his first term by the City Council. His opposition in the Council consisted of 29 aldermen, all white. The remaining 21 members of the Council were mostly black. What became known as the "Vrdolyak 29" after their de facto leader, Ed Vrdolyak, the alderman of the southeast side's 10th Ward, voted down every piece of legislation put forward by Washington. Clearly little was accomplished in those four years. In the next election, Washington gained a small majority in the Council. The 29 became the 25 and were forced to compromise. For a while, things seemed to calm down a bit.

Harold Washington could have been a great mayor if given the chance. Unfortunately he died shortly into his second administration. In his wake, the Council erupted again in shameless fashion, pushing through the nomination of Eugene Sawyer, a Washington supporter but also a product of the Machine who never really rocked the boat. Sawyer was a good man but not cut out for mayor. Ritchie Daley easily defeated him in the following general election in 1989.

It could be said that Daley picked up where Washington and Sawyer left off in beginning to heal the city of its racial wounds.

Mayor Daley's prowess as a builder was not limited to bricks and mortar, he was a builder of coalitions. Both Daleys knew how to gain support of ethnic voting blocks. Daley the Elder knew that large concentrations of one particular group could be beneficial, as long as you threw a few crumbs their way right before election time. Eventually, people wised up and this tactic no longer worked, especially for his successors. During and following the first Daley administration, Chicago was plagued by racial enmity. Richard M. Daley in contrast to his father understood that in his era, in order to be mayor, he would need to distribute the wealth throughout the entire city. To that end, Daley since the beginning of his administration, surrounded himself with members of ethnic minorities (other than his own) in top level city positions. City Hall for all its faults has been responsive to the needs of the entire city in ways that it never was.

I see this as a tremendous good coming out of the Daley administration. The candidate who was selected as "the black consensus candidate" in this election, former U.S. Senator Carol Moseley Braun, clearly was not qualified for the job. African American voters saw through her and voted against her in overwhelming numbers, proving once and for all that this particular community can think for itself. It no longer can be led by sheep to the polls, either by the machine or by race alone.

Oh yes, there was a candidate who won the election, Rahm Emanuel. To say that he received a mandate from the voters would be a gross understatement. In an election consisting of six candidates, he received 56 percent of the vote, a staggering landslide. True, there was a disappointing turnout for the election, but in my book anyway, the voices of people who choose not to vote are irrelevant. Emanuel had the most money to spend, and had the greatest name recognition with the possible exception of Moseley Braun. Given that, Emanuel did not win all the wards. In the traditional old machine predominantly white wards he came in second to Gary Chico who was supported by alderman Ed (the other Ed in the era of "Council Wars") Burke, and the heads of some of the big unions in town. Where Emanuel came up big, very big, was in the black wards. I haven't done the numbers but I think it's safe to say that Emanuel could not have won without the black vote. You can do your own analysis by checking out the results ward by ward here. Mary Mitchell in her followup column here explains why Emanuel did so well in this part of the city.

Rahm Emanuel has a few other connections.

There are those who do not believe that political "insiders" make good public officials. In debates you seldom hear one candidate these days claiming to be more of an insider than the opponent. While Emanuel had stints in the corporate world, I'm not sure if it could be possible for him to be more of an insider. He was a top adviser to President Clinton. As a congressman without much seniority, he managed to become the fourth highest ranking member of the House of Representatives. His previous job of course was Chief of Staff to President Obama. Frankly I don't see having a mayor with such credentials, especially one having the ear of the sitting president, as being such a bad thing.

Other critics say that Emanuel is brash, ruthless, and obnoxiously ambitious. And he is rich to boot. Well I am none of those things. I wouldn't vote for myself for mayor either. Frankly voting for mayor is not like voting for your spouse, your best friend, or your parish priest. It's not even like voting for president. A mayor is more like a CEO, someone who is responsible for a multi billion dollar entity. A mayor has to know how to get things done, big things and little things. He or she has to know how to delegate, when to point the finger and when to take the heat.

And a mayor has to have a vision for his city. Both Mayors Daley had a vision for Chicago. Richard J. Daley never used the word Chicago without prefacing it with the words, "The Great City of." Richard M. Daley liked to use the term "world class city." As much as I hate that term it illustrated the fact that he believed his city was right up there with the likes of New York, Rio, Paris, London, Madrid, and Tokyo. His faith was so great that he staked his reputation on the bid for the Olympics. As I said before in this space, I fully supported the bid, and never have I seen the loss of the Olympics as a loss for the city, not in the slightest.

I feel that Rahm Emanuel has a similar belief in this city. Unlike two of his opponents, Miguel del Valle and Gary Chico, both of whom may been good mayors, Emanuel's vision for the city not only includes life at the street and community level, but also the big picture. We are living in extremely difficult economic times. The city and the state are almost bankrupt. This is but one of the issues that the new mayor has to face. He also has to look beyond the current fiscal morass to the future, to what this city will be for our children and our grandchildren. In Mary Mitchell's article noted above, she quotes Emanuel as saying:

“I saw too many kids on those [el] platforms with not a thing in their eyes. That is the only thing about this job that gives me pause about my abilities...

“It is not the budget. I’ll work through that. But can you in some way touch these kids in a way that they feel they have got a shot at something? I always knew what I was running for, [but] when I saw those kids, I knew I made the right decision to run for mayor.’’

I've heard him throw out the words "world class city" as well and in the debates he alone among the other candidates said this: "Chicago is a great city."

That's why I voted for him.