November 5, 1998 – The architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune, Blair Kamin, prints the sixth of a series of
articles on plans for Chicago’s lakefront, in which he takes Mayor Richard M.
Daley to task for “shying away from the bold moves necessary to get the job
done” when it comes to shaping the downtown lakefront. In the article Kamin looks at three lakefront
attractions and assesses the potential and the plans for each of them. “Navy Pier,” Kamin writes “enables us to
sample the carnival midway pleasures of urban life, yet it causes
suburban-style pain, particularly through the traffic jams that result from
funneling thousands of cars through already-busy Lake Shore Drive and narrow
feeder streets.” Turning south to
Soldier Field, Kamin says, “Wouldn’t it be wiser to look at what Soldier Field
and its environs could do for the lakefront 365 days a year, not just during
the 10 regular season and exhibition games that the Bears play . . . whether
the Bears leave or stay, Soldier Field can be transformed from a stadium in a
parking lot to a stadium in a park.”
Then, moving to the east, Kamin takes up the issues surrounding Meigs
Field. “Meigs must go,” Kamin
writes. “To stand on this peninsula – to
be removed from the clamor of the city and glimpse the stunning views it
affords of the skyline and the south shoreline – is to realize that Meigs is an
anachronism.” What Kamin urges is
something he calls “a new architecture of both landscape and public
policy.” He recommends appointing a
“powerful lakefront commission that would coordinate the efforts of the
dizzying array of agencies that control the lakefront, seeing to it that the
more than $500 million in projects planned for the next 12 years – roads,
buildings, and revetments – turn into an ensemble that is more than the sum of
its parts.”
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