Apr 10, 2008 7:10 am US/Central
Park District Signs Off On Children's Museum Plan
Museum Wants To Move To Grant Park Despite Opposition
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
The Park District has signed off on plans to move the Chicago Children's Museum from Navy Pier to Grant Park, despite opposition from Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) and many in the community.
On Wednesday, the Park District approved the $100 million plan to build the museum in Grant Park. It would be constructed mostly underground along Randolph Street.
But this does not mean the plan has the final green light. It now must go before the City Plan Commission next month, then the full City Council in June.
Reilly and some community members have argued that the Children's Museum does not belong in Grant Park. The alderman said what later became Grant Park was declared "forever open, clear and free" in 1836, a vision that was upheld by the Illinois Supreme Court at the turn of the last century after department store magnate Montgomery Ward sued to ensure nothing would be built in the park.
But even the woman who once wrote that Grant Park should remain forever open, clear and free now agrees with that position. In a huge reversal, Lois Wille supports the museum's building plans.
"What a terrific way to complete Millennium Park, the synergy of Millennium Park," she said of the plan recently.
Mayor Richard M. Daley is also a strong supporter of the plan, and has claimed that those who oppose it are motivated by racism directed at the children who would visit.
The institution, originally known as the ExpressWays Children's Museum, began with two rooms in the Chicago Cultural Center in 1982. It was later housed in Lincoln Park, then in the North Pier Terminal mall on East Illinois Street, before becoming an anchor in the redeveloped Navy Pier when it opened in 1995.
If the Grant Park plan is approved, the museum will use land donated to the Chicago Park District to build a 100,000 square foot museum using the existing footprint of the Daley Bicentennial Plaza in Grant Park.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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