It’s
big. It’s bulky. It got built in so many pieces throughout the years that there
isn’t an architectural consistency to the entire complex.
IT
CERTAINLY CLASHES with the Burnham plan of the early 20th Century
that was supposed to encourage urban development in Chicago that would not
interfere with the natural beauty of being a city right on the Great Lakes.
But
it got done, and we have to live with it. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m
of a generation that thinks in terms of McCormick Place having always just “been
there.” It doesn’t make me ill because it just seems hard to envision the site
open to anything else.
Which
apparently is what those who prepared the preliminary design for that George
Lucas museum that may someday be built in Chicago are thinking about.
When
I saw the sketches of what that structure will supposedly look like (with the
downtown skyline in the distance and the futuristic-like Soldier Field within
sight), I couldn’t help but think the structure looks ridiculous.
TOTALLY
OUT OF place. As in no way that thing should ever be built on that site, or any
site along the lakefront. As in perhaps I’m sympathetic to the lawsuit filed
Thursday by the Friends of the Parks organization in U.S. District Court to
stop development of the project.
But
perhaps future generations will just sort of accept that it’s there, and not
give it any thought before they check out the assorted artifacts that will wind
up on display in such a museum.
My
own thoughts about the sketches I saw was that the structure looked like a
giant pile of sand along the lakeshore, with some sort of ring casually placed
on top. Giant, as in seven stories high – with that ring being an observation
deck where people can check out Chicago from up high, like they already do by
traveling up to the 103rd floor of the Sears Tower (forget that
Willis nonsense, I’d sooner call it the “Arnold” building).
Almost
as though a giant baby was using our public beach as his personal sandbox and
built sand “castles” that were nothing more than the content of a bucket turned
upside down.
YOU
HUMOR THE youngster for making a nice pile, but it’s not anything permanently
lasting. So why should we think this design that would defile the lakefront’s
appearance is worth any praise?
Now
I know that Lucas has knocked down the public impression that this is a museum
devoted to his “Star Wars” films – saying it will be much more about pop
culture throughout our society.
Yet
it almost looks like somebody’s reject of a Star Wars set – and I’m not alone
in thinking that. Both 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly and 2nd
Ward Alderman Robert Fioretti made similar comments.
With
the would-be mayoral dreamer Fioretti saying it looked to him like the Jabba
the Hut character’s palace. Does this mean we’ll have a Carrie Fisher lookalike
walking around in that skimpy gold-bikini-like outfit worn in “Return of the
Jedi?”
I’M
NOT BOTHERED by the idea of some sort of Lucas-inspired museum being in
Chicago. I just would like to see a bit more inspiration put into its design.
Or else this would literally be nothing more than the gap-filler in a stretch
of tackiness started by the current incarnation of Soldier Field stretching
down to McCormick Place.
Although
perhaps we should feel lucky that one of the most absurd ideas for a lakefront development
never got done – that dream of then-Mayor Richard J. Daley in the 1960s for a
multi-purpose sports stadium to be built on a man-made island IN Lake Michigan
proper.
It
may have looked inspired on a drawing board.
But
just think of how much frustration Chicago White Sox and Cubs fans, along with
Bears fanatics, would have felt trying to navigate to such a structure on game
days. Then getting caught in a ridiculous traffic jam after watching our city’s
typically pathetic ball clubs lose yet again!
-30-
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