Millennium Park
| Millennium Park | |
|---|---|
 | |
 | |
| Type | Urban park |
| Location | Chicago, Illinois |
| Coordinates | 41°52′57.75″N 87°37′21.60″W / 41.8827083°N 87.6226667°W |
| Opened | July 16, 2004 |
| Status | Open all year |
Millennium Park is a prominent civic center of the City of Chicago in Illinois and an important landmark of the city's lakefront. A redeveloped section of Grant Park, the 24.5 acre (101,000 m²) landmark is bounded by Michigan Avenue and its Chicago Landmark Historic Michigan Boulevard District, East Randolph Street, Columbus Drive and East Monroe Drive. It was Mayor of Chicago Richard M. Daley's ambitious idea to realize that which was originally designed as part of Daniel Burnham's Plan of Chicago, a plan for the future of Chicago created in 1909. It is historically the site of the Chicago Cubs' (then known as the White Stockings) first home field in 1871: the Union Base-Ball Grounds.
Planning began in October 1997, construction began in October 1998 and was completed in July 2004. Millennium Park, which has become the world's largest rooftop garden, was opened in a ceremony on July 16, 2004 as part of a three-day celebration that included an inaugural concert by the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus. 300,000 people took part in the grand opening festivities. The park's design and construction won awards ranging from accessibility to green design. Since then, Millennium Park has become a major tourist destination for Chicago. The park features the Cloud Gate, Crown Fountain, Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Lurie Garden and other attractions. The park is connected by bridges to other parts of Grant Park (BP Pedestrian Bridge, Nichols Bridgeway).
The community surrounding Millenium Park has become one of the most fashionable residential addresses in the city. There were ever rumors that the Mayor was planning to move there, though it was later announced that he had changed his mind. More recently, 60602 was named by Forbes as the hottest zipcode in the country, with upscale buildings such as The Heritage at Millennium Park (130 N. Garland) leading the way for other buildings such as Waterview Tower, The Legacy and Momo. The median sale price for residential real estate was $710,000 in 2005 according to Forbes.
The park was four years behind schedule and cost aproximately three times as much as was initially budgeted.[1] Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley at first placed much of the blame for the delay and cost overrun on Frank Gehry, who designed several parts of the park.[2] Some of the features have changed names due to corporate mergers and acquisitions of Bank One with Chase and SBC Communications with AT&T.[1]
Background
From 1852 until 1997 the Illinois Central Railroad, owned the right of way that they used for railroad tracks that separated the downtown Chicago from Lake Michigan. In 1997, when the city gained control of the land in the form of airspace rights, it decided to build a parking facility there. Eventually the city realized that a grand civic amenity might lure private dollars that a municipal improvement wouldn't and thus began the effort to create Millennium Park.[3]
Features
Millennium Park is a portion of the larger Grant Park, the "front lawn" of downtown Chicago. Millennium park itself is one of the larger public parks in metropolitan Chicago, and is a showcase for postmodern architecture. It features the McCormick Tribune Ice Skating Rink, Peristyle at Wrigley Square, Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance, AT&T Plaza, Chase Promenade and Trees in Millennium Park. There are four major artistic highlights: Cloud Gate, Crown Fountain, Lurie Garden and the Jay Pritzker Pavilion.[4] Millennium Park is often considered the largest roof garden in the world, having been constructed on top of a railroad yard and large parking garages. Of its total 24.5 acres of land, Millennium Park contains 12.04 acres (524,358 square ft) of permeable area. The park's accessibility has won its project director the 2005 Barrier-Free America Award in recognition of individual leadership in making our country more accessible for all Americans.[5] In addition, the park was recognized in the Green Roof Awards of Excellence in the Intensive Industrial/Commercial category.[6] Green Roof considers the park to be the largest green roof in the world, as it covers a structural deck supported by two reinforced concrete cast-in-place garages and steel structures that span over Illinois Central Railroad tracks.[7][8] The park has a very rigorous cleaning schedule with many areas being swept, wiped down or cleaned multiple times a day.[9]
Jay Pritzker Pavilion
The principal signature of Millennium Park is the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, a bandshell designed by world-renowned architect Frank Gehry with 4,000 fixed seats plus additional lawn seating for 7,000. A Pritzker Architecture Prize honoree and National Medal of Arts winner, Gehry designed such landmarks as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Der Neue Zollhof in Düsseldorf and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Characteristic of Gehry, the Pritzker Pavilion consists of curving planes of stainless steel resembling the graceful blooming of a flower or the unfurling sails of a massive ship.
The Pritzker Pavilion is the home of the Grant Park Music Festival, the nation's only remaining free, municipally-supported, outdoor, classical music series. The Festival is presented by the Chicago Park District and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.[1] Winding eastward from Pritzker Pavilion is the only bridge in the world designed by Frank Gehry. The 925-foot (282 m) pedestrian bridge, clad in the same type of steel sheet as the bandshell with a hardwood deck, winds like a fluttering ribbon across nearby Columbus Drive from the bandshell to a section of Grant Park along the lakefront.
Cloud Gate
AT&T Plaza is home to Cloud Gate, a three-story, 110-ton steel sculpture that has been dubbed by residents as "The Bean". The sculpture is the work of world-renowned artist Anish Kapoor and is the first of his public art in the United States. The piece was privately funded and the total cost was $23 million, which was considerably more than the original estimate of $6 million.
Cloud Gate is a highly-polished reflective steel sculpture that is meant to resemble a drop of mercury hovering at the point of landing on a plaza of the park. When Millennium Park opened in 2004, the grid of welds around each metal panel was still visible. In early 2005 workers polished out the seams. The curved, mirror-like surface of the sculpture provides striking reflections of visitors, the city skyline (particularly the historic Michigan Avenue "Streetwall") and the sky. Since its installation, Cloud Gate has probably become the most popular sculpture in the city.
Crown Fountain
Crown Fountain, named in honor of Chicago's Crown family, was designed by Catalan conceptual artist Jaume Plensa, and is the first of its kind in the world. Transparent glass block bricks are used to build two 50-foot (15 m) towers standing at either end of a long, black granite plaza submerged under an eighth of an inch layer of water. Behind the glass bricks are high-tech LED video screens. When the screens are illuminated they show the faces of nearly a thousand individual Chicagoans, which showcases the vast diversity of the city. Playing on the theme of historical fountains based around gargoyles with water coming through the open mouth of the creature, each video includes specific moments where the person purses his or her lips and water spouts from a point in the display, such that it appears as if the person is spitting the water out. This happens roughly every five minutes, and there is also a continuous stream of water that cascades over the images.
Lurie Garden
BP Pedestrian Bridge
Budget
The project was known for its notorious delays (it was originally intended to open in 2000 instead of 2004) and tripled costs. Some Chicagoans began to refer to the project deridingly as "next-millennium" park.
During development and construction of the park, many structures were added, redesigned or modified. These changes often resulted in budget increases. For example, the band shell's proposed budget was $10.8 million. When the elaborate, cantilevered Gehry design required extra piling be driven into the bedrock to support the added weight, the cost of the band shell eventually spiraled to $60.3 million. The total cost of the park, as itemized in the following table, amounted to almost $500 million.[10] Much of the fundraising was borne by local business leaders, including the Pritzker family and Crown family.
| Project | Proposed cost | Final cost | % of proposed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Garage | $87.5 million | $105.6 million | 121% |
| Metra superstructure | $43.0 million | $60.6 million | 141% |
| Band shell | $10.8 million | $60.3 million | 558% |
| Music and Dance Theater | $20.0 million | $60.0 million | 300% |
| Park finishes/landscaping | N/A | $42.9 million | |
| Design and management costs | N/A | $39.5 million | |
| Endowment | $10.0 million | $25.0 million | 250% |
| Crown Fountain | $15.0 million | $17.0 million | 113% |
| BP Pedestrian Bridge | $8.0 million | $14.5 million | 181% |
| Lurie Garden | $4.0–8.0 million | $13.2 million | 330%–165% |
| Cloud Gate sculpture | $6.0 million | $23.0 million | 383% |
| Exelon Pavilions | N/A | $7.0 million | |
| Peristyle/Wrigley Square | $5.0 million | $5.0 million | 100% |
| Chase Promenade | $6.0 million | $4.0 million | 67% |
| McCormick Tribune ice rink | $5.0 million | $3.2 million | 64% |
| Misc. (fencing, terraces, graphics) | N/A | $1.6 million |
Criticism and controversy
The Millennium Park project has been the subject of some criticism since its inception. In addition to concerns about the cost overrun, individuals and organizations have complained that the money spent on the park might have gone to other worthy causes, specifically citing ongoing issues with poverty in Chicago and problems within the city's schools. However, others believe that Chicago's potential to become a new type of metropolitan Olympic city could boost investment and help to fund more long term social and educational causes.
Although the park's design and architectural elements have won wide praise, there has been some criticism of its aesthetics. Other criticism has revolved around the larger issue of corruption and political favoritism in the city; for example a July 2004 New York Times article [2] reported that an inflated contract for park cleanup had gone to a company that made large contributions to Mayor Daley's election campaign. Concerns have also been raised over the use of mixed taxpayer and corporate funding and associated naming rights for sections of the park. While a large monument in the northwest corner of the park honors the many private and corporate donors who contributed to its construction, entire squares and plazas within the park are named for their corporate underwriters, with the sponsors' names prominently indicated with stone markers (Boeing Gallery, Exelon Pavilion, AT&T Plaza, Wrigley Square); some critics have deemed this to be inappropriate for a public space. The park curfew and obvious presence of security guards is also cited in some quarters as working against the idea of a public park. For example, during the dusk to dawn event Looptopia, on May 11 and May 12, 2007, public access to the park was completely prevented by police enforcement of the park curfew. This was contrary to the purpose of the event, which was to encourage public access to the Chicago Loop area.
A controversy arose when the park enforced a requirement for professional photographers to obtain a paid permit to photograph the artwork in the park for commercial purposes. In doing so, the city cited the copyrights of the artists who created the works (particularly the popular Cloud Gate sculpture). The copyrights give the artists sole right to profit from their work, and thus applies to images taken for commercial purposes. However, enforcement of the permit requirement was inconsistent and sometimes heavy-handed, resulting in some non-commercial photographers and tourists being accosted while taking pictures of the sculpture, and leading to the incorrect public perception that they are banned from taking pictures of the park they helped pay for.
Notes
- ^ a b Kinzer, Stephen (2004-07-13). "LETTER FROM CHICAGO; A Prized Project, a Mayor and Persistent Criticism". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved 2008-05-31.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Nance, Kevin (2005-05-23). "Snakelike walkway by Gehry dedicated at Millennium Park". Chicago Sun-Times. Newsbank. Retrieved 2008-06-01.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Lewis, Michael J. (2006-08-06). "No Headline". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved 2008-06-01.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Freemen, Allen (November 2004). "Fair Game on Lake Michigan". Landscape Architecture Magazine. American Society of Landscape Architects. Retrieved 2008-06-01.
- ^ Deyer, Joshua (2005). "Chicago's New Class Act" (PDF). PN. Paralyzed Veterans of America. Retrieved 2007-12-21.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ "Awards". Green Roofs for Healthy Cities. 2005. Retrieved 2008-05-31.
- ^ "Contemporary Urban Waterscapes: designing public spaces in concert with nature". Retrieved 2008-06-01.
- ^ Bernstein, Fred A. (2004-07-18). "ART/ARCHITECTURE; Big Shoulders, Big Donors, Big Art". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved 2008-06-01.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Spielman, Fran (2005-12-16). "New amenities for Millennium Park?: Company proposes baby strollers, Disney training for workers". Chicago Sun-Times. Newsbank. Retrieved 2008-06-01.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Ford, Liam (2004-07-11). "City to finally open its new front yard - Millennium Park's price tag tripled". Chicago Tribune. Newsbank. Retrieved 2008-06-01.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help)
See also
External links
- City of Chicago Millennium Park
- Public Building Commission of Chicago Millennium Park Overview
- Chicagoist on the photography "ban"
- Chicago Public Radio special -- audio segments about the park
- ForgottenChicago.com [Little known elements of Chicago’s infrastructure, architecture, neighborhoods and general cityscape, existing and historical]
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