August 29, 1993 – A lengthy Chicago Tribune article seems to signal
a coming rebirth for the Chicago River, a long-awaited event captured in one of
the opening paragraphs of the article, “…a second life is being pumped into the
130-mile Chicago waterway. Once choked with steamboats and barges, the river—if
developers and planners have their way—will be populated with pedestrians,
tourists and businesses. Already being
built or on the drawing board are riverfront walks, parks, gardens, apartments
and offices.” [Chicago Tribune, August
29, 1993] Three months away will be the opening of a “continuous Riverwalk
from Michigan Avenue to the lake.” In
the coming spring the new downtown campus of the University of Chicago will
open just east of Michigan Avenue. And
in another year a revitalized Navy Pier will open. The city’s Commissioner of Planning and
Development, Valerie Jarrett, observes, “We look at the river as a critical
planning corridor … it’s just not enough that buildings have river walkways,
but linkages – and it's challenging with the bridges.” Numerous projects sit on the drawing board,
all of them looking at the river as being an attractive enhancement to
development. River Bend includes 900
feet of river frontage; it will not be completed until 1992. CityFront Center, a 60-acre mixed-use
development on the north side of the river between Michigan Avenue and the lake
has begun with the completion of the 1,200-room Sheraton Chicago Hotel and
Towers a year earlier. CSX Real
Property, Inc., the real estate arm of CSX Transportation, Inc., owns property
all along the South Branch of the river between Harrison Street to Roosevelt
Road. The company’s regional director of
development, Bill Cromwell, says, “All our plans incorporate the river as an
active ingredient.” From Cermak Road to
Sixteenth Street, the Chicago Park District is beginning to develop an
eight-acre parcel on the east bank of the river for the Chinatown Riverfront
Park. It will be another half-dozen
years before Ping Tom Memorial Park will open along that stretch. The Park District also has a $35 million plan
to renovate 100 acres of land around the mouth of the river with ground being
broken in 1994 for Du Sable Park, to be developed jointly with the Chicago Dock
and Canal Trust.
August 29, 1925 – After 80 years the South Water street market dies at noon as progress moves forward and the first link of the new Wacker Drive, between Franklin and Market Streets prepares to open to traffic the following day. This is the day on which wreckers start demolishing buildings on the north side of South Water Street east of La Salle to begin the eastern extension of Wacker Drive. With this action a market that began on the oldest street in the city, on a street where the first Board of Trade was established in 1848, with annual business of over $300,000,000, closes down and moves to a new location bounded by Fourteenth Place, South Morgan Street, South Racine Avenue, and the Baltimore and Ohio terminal. This market closed in 2001.
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