As I (and many others) predicted yesterday, the Chicago Plan Commission approved the move of the Chicago Children's Museum from their cramped quarters on Navy Pier to new, spacious, subterranean digs in Grant Park by a vote of 13 to 2. Kudos to Commission members Doris Holleb and Lyneir Richardson for proving that they are, in fact, vertebrates. The rest of the members? I'm not so sure. (Do not be surpised if Holleb and Richardson are wished into the cornfield--and off the Commission--by His Honor in the near future.)
Not that the museum will be jammed into the turf tomorrow. There are many steps to be taken before the first shovel of dirt is thrown aside--the next being the City Council's zoning committee, which must approve the measure before it's brought up before the full council.
While many members of the City Council also do whatever the mayor tells them, they have a more difficult decision with consequences that reach well beyond the placement of the museum itself. The alderman of the ward in which the proposed new museum location resides, Brendan Reilly, opposes the plan. Usually, if an alderman opposes a project within the boundaries of his or her ward, that project dies a swift death.
So...are the members of the City Council willing to incur the considerable wrath of the mayor by protecting their longstanding privilege of giving a stamp of approval to anything that happens within their individual wards? Or will they cut out the middleman and slit their own throats by approving the measure over the local alderman's wishes, opening up the substantial probability that their own ward projects will now be fair game for the whims, wishes and warfare of their fellow council members? We shall see.
We shall also see if the Chicago Children's Museum's reputation, already damaged by the museum board's eagerness to jam this ill-conceived plan down the throats of the citizens of this city, continues to erode to the point where so much ill will has been generate that no one will want to go anywhere near their institution, no matter where it is eventually built.
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I can't respect the CCM's board members because they played the race and class discrimination cards in the hope of shaming into silence all opponents of the Grant Park proposal. I wonder how they'd explain my opposition, considering that I'm a brother born and raised on the south side. Oh, I know: "You forgot your roots when you moved to the north side." Whatev. At any rate, I never visited the museum at Navy Pier. A relocation to Grant Park won't spur any eargerness in me to visit it there either.
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