"Peter Zelchenko (59th & Blackstone)"
<pe...@zelchenko.com>: Jun 17 08:08AM -0700
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
<http://hpherald.com/2015/01/14/chicago-non-profit-partners-with-yoko-ono-to-reimagine-jackson-park/>
, PDF here <http://hpherald.com/Jan21.pdf>)
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
<http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20130420/ISSUE03/304209991/one-mans-dream-a-revitalized-jackson-park>.
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
<https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/goodneighbors/D5EDYjh0iuU>.)
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
<https://www.facebook.com/project120chicago/videos/1111496935574586/>
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. Jeff
Edstrom claims all the
credit for bringing Scouts to do volunteer cleanup
work in Jackson Park.
But I was picking up used condoms and laying the
difficult groundwork for
regular stewardship long before Jeff elbowed me aside,
and ejected my son
from his own troop. 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
<https://lplatform.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/proposalforoversightcommittee.pdf>).
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
<https://lplatform.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/proposalforoversightcommittee.pdf>
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 |
