Parks and Project 120 discussion

[Peter Zelchenko (59th & Blackstone)]

The more I observe the unfolding of the ongoing parks issue, the more I sense something is amiss.

I adore Louise and JPAC, and one must respect her arguments about how there have been numerous meetings and how people should be more involved if they want to have input. Still, there is a question of careful and conservative stewardship at issue here. We trust JPAC and aldermen to watch our backs, and yet I am concerned about the possibility that our own people are being used and can't always see the big picture.

In January 2015, the Herald reported (HTML here, PDF here) on the public meeting at Ida Noyes, where Project 120's Bob Karr stated that "discussions with Yoko Ono have been personal and complete" and that Ono had "visited the island on many occasions to walk the space and help them envision" the project. The story is illustrated with a glitzy artist's rendering of the controversial music pavilion, done in April 2014. For that to happen, discussions must have begun at the latest very early in 2014, likely even sometime in 2013. In fact, Crain's reported on this in April 2013. The Crain's story shows Bob in a justifiably positive light as an old friend to Chicago, with deep involvement in our Japanese community. (Carolyn Ulrich and Liz Moyer recently discuss a similar timeline here in Good Neighbors.)

How is it that Ono had already been starting to walk the grounds in 2013 and Project 120 already had this deep, even "complete," planning with her a year, a month, or even a day before the local public got wind of it? It implies numerous private meetings early on among the Park District, Leslie, Louise, and Project 120.

One thing I wonder, then, is whether it does any good to attend public meetings, as Louise advises us to do more often. After all, the first meeting where the public was invited was held some time after some provisional go-ahead must have been given for a New York artist to have her way with that land as part of her "Imagine Peace" franchise. What little community could possibly stop such a train after it's moving?

I am watching on Facebook with some concern, as thousands of people all over the world this week are indiscriminately cheering Yoko Ono's upcoming sculpture. There's a gaudily produced video that looks like a Hollywood movie trailer, a bizarre pastiche of references to the World's Fair and Yoko's peace franchise, but so very out of touch with the idea of a peaceful Jackson Park. The sculpture does not appear to have been in the original planning. It's her first North American installation, they say.

Now, I'm pretty civically engaged, and I don't think this little perk for Yoko Ono truly settled into the local consciousness until very recently. The problem with this is that it now shares the same tinge of private interest as the Lucas Museum debate. As the Facebook virality demonstrates, this sculpture is, first and foremost, for Yoko Ono and her arts community. It is only secondarily for the Japanese-American people, and lastly for the people of the South Side of Chicago, assuming it is intended for them at all. I'd be surprised if many locals knew anything about it. I think South Shore and Woodlawn have no idea at all, there being no newspapers there. Personally, I am not sure exactly what good postmodern sculptures do us when what so many of us want in Jackson Park is what Olmsted craved: the simple quietude of nature. Although that's a debatable matter of taste, it assumes debate where there has been none. In any event, I ask here what I asked on Facebook: is this the year we give away parts of our lakefront to celebrities so that they may erect personal monuments to themselves? But suddenly, it's almost here.

Peace, Ms. Ono, starts with showing the world your full face, trusting to democratic processes rather than bread-and-circus presentations about your preconceived plan. Arrogant people who are treated like gods are the ones who start wars.

What Project 120 is doing beyond Yoko Ono and a few other Jackson Park amenities is hardly clear. At the last meeting, Leslie snatched the microphone out of my hand almost immediately, because I began raising the greater oversight questions surrounding all three South Parks (Jackson, Midway, Washington), since they are all covered as one entity in the Project 120 framework plan. Leslie just wanted to smooth over the Jackson Park speedbump, quiet the 200 people in the room, and get to dinner. But the Project 120 plan is more comprehensive than this. As a little mouse in the maze, I can't see everything, and perhaps neither can Leslie. Sometimes we have to go by our senses, based on how we have observed such things playing out in the past elsewhere.

What I sense is this: Project 120's apparent extension of its noblesse to the entire South Parks system does not mean an extension of its largesse. They have pushed the Japanese project first and hardest, and it was all done and certain provisional official and financial commitments made before the community ever got wind of it, conceivably even sometime before JPAC was consulted. So let's not talk about how many meetings were held, because it doesn't mean much if they're held just to show us what's already pretty well baked in. Louise, if you knew about this in 2013 and you say you want more public involvement, you should have had Leslie host a public listening session in 2013, not 2015.

Let's not talk about not getting involved. I came into the restoration debate about eight months ago with a proposal about The Swiss Chalet in Washington Park, to repurpose it as a clubhouse for Scouts and other youth groups. This was part of my plan to extend Scouting into the Washington Park area, where it hasn't existed for decades. I soon found myself the subject of Cecilia Butler's ire, since apparently on her suggestion Project 120's designer had already drawn in an equestrian course, with The Chalet to sit between two aluminum grandstands and serve as the concession stand for horse shows. A rather undignified future for The Chalet, I would say, but I felt perhaps Cecilia and I could work something out.

Bob Karr and the Park District had personal copies of my proposal. I'd even spoken to him on the phone about it three months before the February 2016 meeting in Washington Park where they showed plan revisions. Although there was plenty of time, he did not even put my proposal on the map alongside Cecilia's, and, although he must have known there would be friction, he did not volunteer to mediate. I've received no explanation, but my less generous side feels that it is because he knows I have no power and Cecilia is the sole person to appease in Washington Park. This, however, would be horse-trading, not dealing respectfully with our commons and the public forum. So I don't believe it.

Louise, I've tried to be involved. This is what I get for it.

Here is my jaundiced view, after 20 years of involvement in public planning. It is that Bob Karr and Yoko Ono will have what they came for. They say they don't want us to have to spend any public money for it, which is city planner's code for "Sure, we can push through this private amenity as long as they foot the whole bill and we don't make waves." They'll throw the rest of us a bone with a few cheap sheets of paper called a framework plan, and just like the last framework plans from about 15 years ago, this one will sit on a shelf and collect dust due to a lack of funding. But I don't want to believe that, either.

Under this view, it's actually conceivable that they have simply put the framework plan out here to create loud fanfare, a kind of bandwagon smokescreen, so that they can freight in their plans. The larger framework plan makes the Wooded Island and Yoko Ono affair look like only a small part of a much larger picture, but for them I suspect it could be the whole picture. It's more innocuous to paint a little house to the side of a colossal landscape. Why else would they have done their part first? They might easily walk away after this, leaving the community with nothing but a few sketches. Louise gets her bathrooms, Yoko Ono gets her sculpture, Cecilia Butler gets the Cecilia Butler Memorial Equestrian Grandstands (and that one's only a maybe). And yet their ambitious plans for Jackson Park suggest they want to do much more.

But then I don't want to believe this, either. Clyde Watkins, the lead fundraiser for Project 120, buttonholed me at the last meeting right after Leslie had grabbed the microphone, and he and I had a nice talk outside. Clyde is a displaced Hyde Parker and he had a big hand in the founding of HPHS. Seems like a very reasonable guy. I soon sent him a proposal that I'd drawn up earlier, calling for a public oversight committee to deal with the whole South Parks plan (see this link). He seemed impressed and said he would take it and my Chalet proposal to the Project 120 committee to see what he could do," but he noted that he couldn't promise anything. As the project fundraiser, he pointed out that he had some pull. Initially, I felt this was very generous of him.

In the morning, sometimes, you come to your senses. Clyde Watkins is a warmhearted fellow, I can see that. But on further analysis it is clear that his avuncular generosity is misplaced. Bob Karr has done great things for Japanese Americans. But what am I thinking that I should be grateful to them for considering my proposals? Clyde and Bob don't live here, and Yoko Ono lives in New York. This shouldn't categorically deny them the possibility of contributing to our community, and as stewards of Japanese culture and history, they have some right to contribute to the Japanese Garden. But why do I feel as if they have all of the power here? Why should they be able to pull any strings at all, especially as I can't seem to do it myself?

I think a South Parks planning oversight committee would need to be initiated and approved by the CPD board, because it should have a mandate not dissimilar to that of the advisory councils. Project 120 would go up in my estimation by persuading Michael Kelly of this. Some say that the PACs already serve this purpose. But my feeling is that these should chiefly be maintenance and stewardship bodies, as well as being there to put the brakes on any mischief from CPD or anyone else -- but they should not by themselves be the centers for major policy and capital improvement decisions, especially if plans span multiple parks. Parks Advisory Councils, as Louise and Cynthia are all too well aware, tend to stagnate in membership over time and do not maintain robust representation. Sadly, this is because the everyday work of volunteerism and stewardship is rare these days; still, that should not mean that whoever has stuck it out should hold sway over all major decisions. This is a job for a more diffuse ad hoc deliberative body. While the PACs would have strong representation in the body, as would the aldermen, there would be checks and balances, as well as votes on any proposals. But is it fair if Yoko Ono is already getting what she wants without checks and balances, and the rest of us are just getting paper?

What I feel is that all of this hinges on Bob Karr. He has already managed to get a local philanthropist to commit large sums to the Jackson Park effort. If his efforts on behalf of JASC and the Japanese community are not to be dismissed as smokescreen, then he really needs to commit to a full South Parks plan from beginning to end. I could see an argument that Yoko Ono sculpture and the music pavilion could serve to anchor broader fundraising, but it could just as easily not achieve this goal.

This shouldn't mean that all of the revitalization energy and money need to come from the Japanese community. But we do need Bob Karr and Clyde Watkins. Bob needs to tell us that he and Clyde intend to stay fully in this game through to its logical conclusion, to help make this happen. That means they should roll up their sleeves and be ready to spend the next 10 or 15 years with us yokels and with this new oversight committee, and teach us to develop -- and execute -- a real long-term vision and fundraising plan to revitalize every corner of the South Parks system, not just leave us with some paperwork. This is where their talents lie, and with such a commitment perhaps they would earn the city's gratitude and the oversight committee's excited approval on Yoko Ono.

I don't want to believe this is all smokescreen. Bob Karr and Clyde Watkins seem like genuine people. Yoko Ono is a national treasure. If Project 120 is going to stay in the game, I'm sure they're very welcome -- but there needs to be some better order to this, and a long-term commitment. And I do know that the Yoko Ono proposal ought to be referred to the oversight committee, no matter how far along in the "done deal" category it appears to be. I think it might pass, and it wouldn't kill Jackson Park -- but Yoko Ono herself should be the first to acknowledge that it should go through a real public process, not an artificial one. That spirit is what could differentiate her from George Lucas.

That is how rewards are normally bestowed. But I feel they've put the cart before the horse here by getting their desserts before anyone else. Against a deferred reward backdrop, Yoko Ono in Jackson Park does not seem like such a misplaced project. It's the notion that it came first, not the art or location or even the lack of public debate per se, that makes it seem in poor taste. Clyde's rational tone makes me think that Project 120 would be first to acknowledge this as the root cause of the recent political pushback.

And this is a cautionary lesson to George Lucas and Mellody Hobson. If they had spent 20 years with their sleeves rolled up helping the whole city rather than airdropping money and planners for their pet project, it might have been different. A plum in the form of a lakefront museum, even something in questionably postmodern architectural taste, might not only not have been such a hard pill to swallow. Chicago might have been somewhat less averse to giving it to them. If you look at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion -- a kind of gift from Chicago to a family that has been in the game here for decades -- you see a contemporary picture of how we ought to reward our local philanthropists. I recall that it too was done with little advance debate, without really asking permission from Bob O'Neill and the folks in Streeterville. I feel Chicago accepted it not because the Pritzkers sunk millions into the park, we did it because the Pritzkers seem to belong. And in comparison to the Lucas and Yoko Ono projects, architecturally Pritzker is modest in its neoclassical passivity, its understatement.

Have I pissed everyone off yet? Is there anyone I've missed?

[Millie Juskevice]

Swiss Chalet?  In Washington Park?  Where?

I was born in Hyde Park, a 4th generation Hyde Parker.  Learned to ride a bike in Washington Parks Rose Garden, went to the T-hut after prom, got 2 degrees from the U of C, etc.

I never heard of a swiss chalet in Washington park.  Extensive searching online brought no light to the issue. 

Does anyone have a location and/or picture of it please?

--
* Send group messages to: GoodNe...@googlegroups.com
 
* Hyde Park Calendar: http://tinyurl.com/HydeParkFromNowOn
 
* Archives: http://tinyurl.com/GNMessages

* To unsubscribe, change message frequency or ask questions about the group: jaymu...@gmail.com

[Paul and Clara Carson]

Could you be referring to the small building near 53rd and Cottage Grove?

[Laura Shaeffer]

It is called the Swiss Chalet and has a placard near it. Its opposite the Armoury off Cottage Grove. I had been trying to find out more about it for 10 years and finally got some background. I also finally got to enter the building, it had been severely damaged by fire years ago, too dangerous to enter really. The cost of a gut rehab was prohibitive I remember, but such an interesting location, history and charming building. It was once a comfort station and housed all the equipment for lawn bowl, you can still see the two playing fields in front of the building, we  had wanted to propose a project that would connect Hyde Park and Washington park in creative ways. 

So many dreams...

Missing Hyde Park,

Best,

Laura  

<Chalet _0086.jpg>

[Millie Juskevice]

Thanks Laura.  How wonderful you have worked on Parks issues.  Thank you for all your help.  And thanks to all who have been working on the park issues.

It is a noble task you are all doing.