The campus of the Michael Reese Hospital, targeted as a potential Olympic Village should Chicago win the bid, is set for demolition. Some preservationists remain upset, believing that the hospital campus is of historical and architectural importance, with its Walter Gropius-influence in the design.

WTTW’s “Chicago Tonight” took a look at the hospital campus and why some are fighting to preserve the buildings.

Watch here: WTTW Chicago Tonight–Michael Reese Hospital Demolition

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Gropius in Chicago Coalition

Chicago 2016 candidate city site

The law authorizes Mayor Richard Daley to sign off on a contract that puts full financial liability for the Games on the city should Chicago next month be named the host city. It also requires Chicago 2016 to provide the council with quarterly reports covering expenses, financial forecasts, construction progress and details about women and minority contractors.

The vote marked a show of solidarity by the aldermen, some of whom had expressed concern about making taxpayers financially liable if the games lose money. The vote comes just weeks after a report from the International Olympic Committee that cited the lack of a full financial guarantee and lagging public support as strikes against Chicago’s bid.

“It’s not just the Chicago Olympics, it’s the United States Olympics,” Ald. Carrie Austin (34th) said before the council’s vote, prompting many in the audience who wore “I Back the Bid” t-shirts to applaud. “If we want to be united as a country, we gotta pull together as a city, as a state, as a country, for the bid.”

The International Olympic Committee will decide on Oct. 2 between the finalist cities of Chicago, Madrid, Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro. The event would bring more than 360,000 jobs to the Chicago area, Chicago 2016 leaders have said.

In a series of patriotic speeches leading to Wednesday’s 49-0 vote (the 36th Ward does not currently have an alderman after William J.P. Banks’ retirement last month), aldermen envisioned a Chicago whose landscape and economy had been invigorated by the Games.

Some formerly skeptical aldermen pointed to a reassuring audit of Chicago 2016’s budget by the respected Civic Federation as a turning point in their feelings toward the bid; others praised Chicago 2016 CEO Pat Ryan and his staff for conducting a series of community meetings – one in each of the 50 wards.

“I think everyone was concerned about the possibility of overruns,” said Ald. Richard F. Mell (33rd). “But they (Chicago 2016) got this thing buttoned down so tight, I think unless a meteor hits us the day before, this is gonna be a marvelous event.”

Other aldermen lauded Daley as a visionary.

“It’s not too often that you have a mayor who thinks years and years ahead,” said Ald. Gene Schulter (47th).

Ald. Joe Moore (49th) was a rare exception to the congratulatory speeches, focusing instead on his worries over the potential for corruption and a lack of transparency. He said he had decided just hours earlier to vote in favor of the ordinance.

“I will cast my vote in support of hope, in support of optimism, in support of what the Olympics can bring to our city, but with a wary eye cast on our city’s ugly history of political corruption and of favoritism,” Moore said.

For Chicago resident Jan Barkell, one of several dozen people wearing bid t-shirts in the packed council chambers, the aldermen’s vote was a major step toward realizing her dream of bringing the Games to Chicago.

Barknell, a homemaker who lives in Lincoln Park, said she believes the Olympics will be a boon to Chicago’s economy instead of a hindrance.

“I can’t imagine how beautiful it would be to showcase it (the Games) on the lakefront,” she said.

Members of groups opposing the bid, who have made their presence known in recent community meetings with jeers and signs, were largely unheard inside the chamber. But a member of No Games Chicago criticized the unanimous vote before it even occurred.

“No Games Chicago has always predicted that our aldermen would abandon their duty to protect taxpayer interests and go along with the mayor’s Olympic blank check,” Tom Tresser said in a press release he handed out as aldermen prepared for the vote.

Clark attributes the flare-up to the trees and shrubs being dug up at the Michael Reese Hospital site, which is near his apartment. He said he and other residents are experiencing, “deep concern and dismay,” regarding the imminent demolition of more than two dozen buildings on the South Side site because as far as the environmental impact of the 2016 Olympic Village, “nothing is clear” about the project.

Clark said already the air is different, just from the greenery being yanked.

“I already feel the effects. There’s clearly dust if nothing else,” said Clark. “I’m very upset and distressed. If I’m feeling like this now and they haven’t even started.”

The 37-acre site could be the Olympic Village, if Chicago gets the 2016 games nod Oct. 2. As of Aug. 27, no demolition permits had been applied for by either contractor, Heneghan Wrecking Co. or Brandenburg Industrial Service Co., said Bill McCaffrey, spokesman for the city’s Department of Buildings.

With three schools and two residential apartment complexes so close, Clark’s concerns are valid, said Brian Urbaszewski, director of environmental programs at the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago.

“Parents would have a reason to be concerned and all strategies should be employed to minimize dust from that project,” said Urbaszewski. “And asbestos is dangerous and leaves a ticking time bomb if you spread that stuff all over the place.”

Although Clark is white, according to the 2000 U.S. Census, 75 percent of residents over 18 in the 4th Ward—which houses Bronzeville— are African-American. Dust and respiratory irritants can trigger asthma attacks and African-Americans have higher risk factors, Urbaszewski said.

Additionally, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America’s Web site, blacks are three times more likely to be hospitalized from asthma and to die from asthma.  African-American women, the site says, have the highest asthma mortality rate of all groups.

In the late 1990s, the Center for Neighborhood Technology conducted a study that theorized demolition from numerous CHA buildings caused higher than average rates of asthma/respiratory illnesses in Bronzeville. The latest demolition could be “hazardous to human health,” and a health plan needs to be developed, said Dave Chandler, principal business analyst with the center.

“It’s a legitimate concern with school kids breathing in the air for the duration of the demolition,” said Chandler.

Prairie Shores resident James Carpenter, who is black, said he would like to know more about the possible hazards involved.  He said he hadn’t been notified about anything regarding the demolition.

“If there is something that would affect my health without me knowing, I’d be upset and very concerned because I have a wife and three children,” said Carpenter.

Yet not everyone is worried. Luciana Jenkins wasn’t when she picked up her two-year-old son from day care at Lake Meadows apartments nearby.

“I think the air is just as polluted without the demolition,” said Jenkins.

Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th) said clean-up of interior asbestos/lead could start in September or October, with demolition in October. The contractors, she said, understand they’re in the middle of a residential neighborhood and special precautions are needed.

“They have to be very careful in this demolition,” said Preckwinkle.

But Clark said the alderman has not been responsive about this issue, and that residents have received, “inadequate information.”

2016 Bid Committee Chair Lori Healey. Photo by James Ginderske

The Chicago 2016 committee gave a presentation at the 49th ward selected location of the Rogers Park library on August 5 revealing little in the way of new information while conveying a local version of their city-wide effort to market the bid to Chicago neighborhoods.

In a 45-minute presentation Bid Committee Chair Lori Healey, along with several members of the 2016 committee, laid out their vision for bringing the games to Chicago. Featured prominently were both Paralympic and Olympic former competitors, each giving passionate personal testimony about the meaning and spirit of the Games.

In terms of details, the presentation laid out several anticipated benefits to the City they said could make the Games an economic boon for currently cash-strapped Chicago. They included an estimated 315,000 jobs, which they claimed would generate over $7 billion in wages.

Healey made the point repeatedly that organized labor is in favor of the project, along with many in Chicago’s business community.

Healey also claimed that while $750 million in guarantees had been pledged to the International Olympic Committee by the City of Chicago and the State of Illinois, the games represent a “zero risk opportunity for the people of Chicago.”

This seeming contradiction was seized upon by several in the audience, who demanded more information. One questioner pointedly stated that he wanted a more thorough accounting of the process “instead of just being told, -‘Trust us.’”

The Bid Committee then explained the arrangement recently made with the non-profit policy analyst firm The Civic Federation to audit the bid committee’s financial predictions. They reported The Civic Federation has agreed to complete this work and release their results by early September.

A crowded Rogers Park Library. Photo by James Ginderske

Many attendees were openly skeptical of the City’s ability to truthfully explain all of the potential risks associated with the bid. People cited the parking meter fiasco, the UIC subsidized-housing scandal, and various general contract and bidding concerns as justification for wondering aloud if the City can actually follow through on its promises.

Also discussed was the “World Sports 2016” program, meant to make funding available for neighborhood sports programs for youth. Healey stated that more funds for this program were due to be available soon, and that the limiting factor to disbursing them to the neighborhoods were commitments from volunteer coaches to manage the programs.

The presenters were unable to answer how much, if any of the current fund had been distributed to the Rogers Park or Edgewater communities. In response to a question about the relocation of the boats from Monroe Harbor, where the rowing events are planned, the committee suggested that they could be moved to new South Side Chicago Park District harbors that are already planned.

They denied knowledge of any plans to place the boats in harbors in the Rogers Park or Edgewater communities,

but did not categorically rule out the possibility such plans might emerge later.

Several supporters of No Games Chicago, a group that opposes the Olympic bid were present, along with about 200 area residents.

49th Ward Alderman Joe Moore. Photo by Christopher Pratt

The overall tone of the meeting seemed to be that while the Olympics would be a great honor for the City, fatigue with years of scandals and back-room deals has greatly complicated the challenge of evaluating the Bid Committee’s proposal.

The meeting ended punctually at 9 p.m., with several people approaching the Bid Committee with further thoughts and inquiries.

A 2016 committee member carefully wrote down each question as it was asked, doubtless to continue honing a message that is both impressive and bold in scale while making many Chicagoans deeply suspicious about what its ultimate price might prove to be.

In selling the games to Chicago’s residents, meanwhile, promises of park enhancements and sports programs for kids, as well as affordable housing, have been featured alongside visions of jobs and boom times.

But current plans put great burdens on parks, and they involve the imminent demolition of a major respository of the city’s historic architecture (see part two).

In many cases promised “legacy” facilities seem designed not to meet actual needs of current park users but to accommodate the requirements of Olympic planners. In many cases they involve taking away existing resources while promising residual benefits sometime in the future.

In some cases they involve taking away facilities that have been only recently built.

In Jackson Park, an Olympic field hockey venue is planned — on the site of a world-class track and football field next to Hyde Park Academy. It’s one of only three regulation tracks at Chicago schools.

The track and field opened just eight years ago, funded by a community-led drive which raised well over half a million dollars, including support from the National Football League.

“It’s eight years into a minimum 35-year lifespan,” said Ross Petersen, president of the Jackson Park Advisory Council.

Under the current plan, the new track will be bulldozed, along with an adjacent baseball diamond, he said. Chicago 2016 has promised to rebuild it after the games, he said, although a permanent field hockey field facility has also been touted as a possible “legacy.”

The field hockey was moved to the school after the original proposal, using popular soccer fields near a lakefront nature sanctuary, led JPAC to vote against using the park for the Olympics. Petersen said the council is grateful for the site change, but when he asked at a recent meeting whether members wanted to pass a new resolution updating their stance, no one offered a motion.

In Douglas Park, recently rebuilt gymnasiums and a pool serving the Collins Highcampus — reportedly updated at a cost of $30 million — will be demolished to make way for a $37 million velodrome for bicycle racing. Afterwards a pool “may” be moved to the park from the South Side aquatics center, and Chicago 2016 promises to convert the highly specialized, elite outdoor venue into a year-round “multisport facility.”

In Lincoln Park, Chicago 2016 is touting a legacy of 20 new tennis courts after the Olympic tennis venue is taken down. They will replace 20 existing tennis courts.

Washington Park has attracted the most attention. There a $400 million temporary stadium for opening ceremonies and track events, along with a $100 million aquatic center featuring four pools, will be sited on the open meadow that dates to Frederick Law Olmsted’s 1870 design.

The thousand-acre park, listed on the National Registery of Historic Places, comprises one-seventh of the Chicago’s parkland and features 14 baseball diamonds, football and soccer fields, and cricket pitches. Under current plans, it will be closed for at least four years to accomodate the two-week 2016 extravaganza.

The Washington Park Advisory Council has endorsed the siting, although only a few of the 26 conditions it issued two years ago as requirements for its support have been addressed. But a number of community, citywide and national groups have opposed the use of the meadow for the stadium, including the Hyde Park Kenwood Community Conference, Friends of the Parks, Preservation Chicago and the National Association for Olmsted Parks.

NAOP objects that Chicago 2016 plans “threaten the park’s signature public open spaces and sweeping vistas, jeopardizing [the] integrity, significance and public use” of “a masterpiece of America’s preeminent landscape architect.” According to NAOP, “plans to tear down the stadium following the Olympics are unrealistic” — and even if they are carried out, the new ampitheater and aquatic center would “take a major open space and restrict its use to specific activities, and a much more limited user population.”

The group urges Chicago 2016 to use the Chicago Park District’s South Lakefront Framework Master Plan as a basis for restoring the park” and cites London’s plan for its Olympics, “taking brownfields and adding new parks” instead of “damaging existing historic park resources.”

NAOP executive director Iris Gestram said Chicago 2016 president Lori Healey has not responded to their letter, which was sent in April. Chicago 2016 did not respond to inquiries for this article.

At a recent community meeting at the Washington Park refectory, Chicago 2016 legacy director Arnold Randall was asked if the Olympics planners would consider an alternative site for the stadium. He said that while planning is “a work in progress,” siting the stadium in Washington Park “is part of the bid. That’s the plan and that’s the policy and that’s not going to change.”

Some think that means it won’t be addressed before the host city is chosen in October, however.

“Nothing is hard and fast,” said Erma Tranter of Friends of the Parks, pointing out that London made dramatic changes in its venue siting after winning the 2012 bid. She said Olympic planners have told her “we have some flexibility…we can change some sites.”

The money spent burying stadium infrastructure in the ground — millions of dollars spent on water, sewer and electrical lines — will be wasted in Washington Park and could spur development at other sites, she said.

“They’re spending millions of dollars on things nobody is ever going to use” after the Olympics, said Jonathan Fine of Preservation Chicago. “It’s a complete and total waste of money.”

Advocates point to the USX site on the south lakefront, where a large residential and commercial development has stalled for lack of financing; or the 92-acre, 15-block site where CHA’s Robert Taylor Homes were demolished — 1800 units of mixed-income housing are planned for the site, and so far 181 have been built; or the former site of Comiskey Park.

Tranter points out that the city owns about a third of the extensive vacant tracts to the west of Washington Park. “They have options,” she said.

Other U.S. cities that have hosted Olympics have added parkland, but Chicago’s plan doesn’t, she said. “A $5 billion budget and not a square inch of new parkland,” comments Fine. Tranter adds that Chicago is last among the nation’s largest 20 cities in park acreage per person.

Chicago 2016 plans to leave 5,000 or so of the stadium’s 80,000 seats to serve as a neighborhood concert and sport facility which “can be expanded to host major international athletic events” and “will be the centerpiece for the revitalization of the Washington Park area,” according to the bid book. The ampitheatre will be four feet deep and surrounded by six-foot berms.

For some years, some residents have wanted a festival site in the park to handle summer events (others fear the noise levels that will result). The park’s playing fields were not the location envisioned, however. At the recent community meeting, residents discussed the best location for the festival site — though no one from Chicago 2016 or the park district suggested the question was open for discussion.

Olmsted’s original plan had a concert and parade ground in front of the parks’ Refectory, which is now a parking lot across Garfield Boulevard from the meadow. That’s the best place for a festival site, Tranter said.

Fine argues that the ampitheater is just the concrete foundation of the stadium, and it’s main function is to lessen the enormous cost of removing concrete. Indeed, the temporary stadium will require many tens of thousands of tons of concrete to be poured into — and removed from — the historic park.

London’s 2012 Olympic stadium (which is now projected to cost twice as much as estimated in the city’s 2005 bid) features permanent and temporary seating, as does Chicago’s. Its foundation consists of 4,000 concrete columns, with permanent seating attached to 12,000 concrete terrace units weighing as much as ten metric tons each. Over that goes a concrete upper tier and a hundred 3,500-ton steel terracing supports for the temporary seating.

George Rumsey of HPKCC worries that “when it’s over they’re going to look at it and say, why should we tear it down? It would be perfect for the Bears.” (The team has the smallest stadium in the NFL, and Soldier Field could be downsized to the concert venue long desired by the powers-that-be. Or the Washington Park facility could be turned over to the University of Chicago, which already administers Midway park and which has been buying land west of King Drive.)

“They say they’re going to downsize it, but what if they change their mind? What guarantees are there? None,” he said. “It’s a land grab, taking over our park with no accountability — and there’s no accountability on what’s going to happen afterwards.”

Chicago 2016 did not respond to repeated requests for information regarding the source of funding for restoring Washington Park, relocating pools from the aquatic center to other parks, restoring Jackson Park’s $500,000 track, or converting the open-air velodrome in Douglas Park into a year-round recreation center. Those costs don’t seem to be included in projected construction costs; $400 million for the stadium is obviously a low-ball figure.

“It’s very unclear” where the money is supposed to come from, Tranter commented. FOTP’s principles for Washington Park state: “Funds must be budgeted to dismantle the stadium.”

As far as track: A serious commitment to providing track and field opportunities for Chicago youth would require better facilties, most crucially an indoor facility; a commitment by the schools and the park district in order to reach all ages; and a significant increase in the hours for which school track coaches are compensated, currently far less than for other sports, said Bill Gerstein, an educator who spearheaded the fundraising drive for the Jackson Park track.

Chicago 2016 has dangled the possibility of turning the National Guard Armory near Washington Park into the city’s first public indoor track facility — a longstanding proposal of sports advocates. But no commitment has been made.

Chicago 2016’s “legacy” group World Sports Chicago touted a summer track and field program in May which they said would serve 3,500 kids; in July the Tribune reported that 300 had participated. (Most WSC events appear to be Olympics-boosting rallies for children who are already attending park district camp or public school.) Inquiries yielded no response.

Continued: Architectural Legacy