Thompson Center sale – would “Big Jim” wind up losing his tribute bldg.?

I have mixed views over what ought to become of the building that already has had more than a third of a century of life – the James R. Thompson Center that is the physical Chicago home of Illinois state government.

A significant Chicago intersection for many layers of government

I know some officials think that the sale of the downtown Chicago real estate would produce revenue too essential to balancing out state government’s finances that would make it too irresponsible to even think of retaining the facility.

YET THE IDEA of now having to find office space for all the state agencies that are based here elsewhere in Chicago make me think it may be irresponsible to abandon their current home.

I know of the ideologues of downstate Illinois who take great offense that Springfield, the state capital, is considered less important for some state agencies than Chicago. But it seems like it could be reckless to sell off the state facility just to appease those ideologues who can’t accept that Springfield is essentially a city built on a 19^th Century scale (Abraham Lincoln would recognize much of it) even though the world has progressed far into the 21^st Century!

This debate is going to perk up in coming years, what with Gov. J.B. Pritzker signing the bill into law that creates a two-year process that would enable someone else to bid on, and buy, the square-block property at Clark and Randolph streets.

Old and new state buildings across the street

The prime real estate located right across the street from City Hall/County Building and also from the old State of Illinois Building (which long ago was converted into the Bilandic Building home of the Supreme Court of Illinois along with the appellate courts for the Chicago area).

AND ALSO KITTY-corner from the Daley Center building, which serves as the Cook County courthouse – at least for civil cases.

All of which makes Clark and Randolph an all-important intersection for the happenings of politics and government at the city, county and state levels.

What becomes of the Dubuffet? Photos by Gregory Tejeda

A presence that would be lessened quite a bit if officials were to decide to let something else become the purpose of the building north of Randolph and west of Clark streets.

As much as some people like to denigrate the building’s appearance and style, I have to admit to kind of getting a kick out of its appearance – even when one tries to ridicule its salmon and sea blue color scheme.

OR, AS I remember, once, someone tried to claim that the Jean Dubuffet sculpture “Monument with Standing Beast” was really nothing more than an AIDS virus trying to infest the body politic. Which probably says more about the mini-mind of the critic than it does anything about the structure itself.

It is interesting that this was an idea that both governors Rod Blagojevich and Bruce Rauner tried to push through the process – although it now has the potential to become a reality under Pritzker.

I just can’t get past the idea that state agencies still need a physical presence in Chicago – unless we’re trying to create the image that state government is completely irrelevant to the existence of the Second City.

A concept that would be totally insipid for anybody to try to spew – no matter how rural Illinois-oriented they are in their approach to life.

WOULD SELLING OFF the state government building in downtown Chicago wind up becoming an even more small-minded decision by our government officials than the move made more than a decade ago to sell off control of parking meters in the city.

The one that saw Chicago blow through the payoff they received, while ensuring that corporate interests will make money off the city for decades to come?

This is something people should think seriously about – particularly if provisions that the existing Chicago Transit Authority “el” and subway platforms at the building would have to be maintained regardless of what some future developer might want to build there.

Of course, I also have my own memory – that of the cinematic scenes from the film “Running Scared” that were shot there. How many of us would not want to see the spot where actor Billy Crystal’s “Chicago cop character” ruined Jimmy Smits’ “drug dealer character” by throwing his “stash” all over the Thompson Center floor?

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Thompson Center: Will we sell it, lose it? Or figure out a way to forget it

My father has devoted his professional life to architecture and construction and has had a hand in the erection of several prominent Chicago downtown structures.
 

Old state building will live longer than Thompson Center

Which is how I can claim to have set foot inside the building now known as the Thompson Center (although it once also carried the brand of State of Illinois Center) long before its official opening in 1985.

HE WORKED FOR one of the companies involved in the building’s erection (keep your silly giggle to yourself) and I remember the day he took me along to the construction site.

I still remember walking around the grounds (while wearing a helmet) and checking out the development of a frame for what is a 16-story building. I even got to walk along a steel beam for a few feet without seriously injuring myself. Yes, I'm pretty sure that things are more stringent these days and somebody would be in serious trouble if my father permitted me to try to do that today.

I also can remember my father taking me along during the renovation of the Chicago Hilton & Towers Hotel (and seeing the luxury rooms stripped down to the drywall) and to the dedication ceremonies for the building we will always think of as the Sears Tower – the original Mayor Daley being present is my lasting memory.

But in my mind, that one day at Clark and Randolph at what was yet to become the state government building in Chicago sticks in my mind the most. And is a large part of the reason why the Thompson Center has always been a building of significance in Chicago. To me, at least.

WHICH IS WHY a part of me is astounded at the negative reputation the structure has developed (other than that some people will feel compelled to whine about anything). And at reports that the building that has barely been with us for a third of a century is endangered. The former state government building in Chicago is approaching a century of age, and no one is talking about tearing down the Bilandic Building (as it's now known).

Gov. Bruce Rauner has made it clear he’d just as soon be rid of the structure, claiming state government would somehow make money off its sale and demolition. Although there also is a sense he thinks that doing away with a Chicago base for state government would reduce the Democratic Party influence over the state.

Because there are those people who get all worked up that Springfield isn’t treated as the be-all-and-end-all of the state of Illinois. Which makes this yet another issue that Rauner and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, quarrel over.

Does 'Big Jim' need new namesake building?

The building’s future also came up last week when the Landmarks Illinois group issued its list for this year of historic structures that are in danger of disappearing.

THE BUILDING COULD be lost because of the state officials who don’t think it worth maintaining, and the group said, “Demolition as part of a sale devalues the civic and cultural advances displayed in (architect) Helmut Jahn’s groundbreaking post-modern design and the opportunities for a development that could integrate the building.”

Personally, I always thought there was something intriguing about the blue-and-salmon color scheme and the outer shell of the building. Its shape stands out amidst the landscape of downtown Chicago. Nobody would mistake the Thompson Center for any other building.

Although from the inside, the building can appear to be a bit shrill and sometimes cheaply constructed. And sound does tend to echo about the building, making it possible for people on the upper floors to hear the ruckus of those who stop off in the basement concourse level to check out the mass of fast food available there.

The latter observations were ones I made in later years when, while working for the now-defunct City News Bureau, I was once a reporter-type person assigned to the press room that used to exist on the building’s ninth floor.

I ONCE LEANED on a wall in just such a way that the drywall collapsed – and a palm-sized hole in the wall was developed. Although I have to admit that when state Central Management Services crews found out, they quickly repaired the damage.

So what is destined to happen to the structure? Will it merely become a part of a list including the Sherman House hotel of what used to exist across the street from Chicago City Hall?

Thompson Center's moment of glory?

Will future generations watch the 1986 film “Running Scared” (starring actors Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines as two of the most unconvincing Chicago cops you'll ever see) and wonder how anyone could dream up the scenes (cocaine bags being dropped from 16 stories high onto the floor of the rotunda) shot at the Thompson Center?

And what will become of Monument with Standing Beast – as in the DuBuffet sculpture whose odd appearance has long confounded people as they enter the structure where “the people’s business” is done in the Second City. Perhaps it will get historic landmark status -- reminding people of what once was at the site long after the structure has been demolished and turned into just another generic high-rise building

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EXTRA: What a crash!!!

I realize it was mere fiction. But there’s a part of me that, every time I’m in Chicago’s Union Station, wants to go find the spot where the train locomotive crashed its way off the tracks and into the station lobby in the film “Silver Streak.”

That 1976 film was the first of several that paired up the duo of comedian Richard Pryor with actor Gene Wilder. Its storyline of Wilder’s character seeing a murder occur on a Los Angeles-to-Chicago passenger train is a bit ridiculous. But the two did show a natural pairing that was enhanced four years later in “Stir Crazy.”

AND YOU HAVE to admit, that finale scene of the train crash into the lobby is something you don’t forget. That and something like the scene in “Running Scared” where we see bags of cocaine being dumped all over the floor of the Thompson Center state government building – thereby upsetting a youthful actor Jimmy Smits who played the heavy in that particular film? Yet another image that pops into my head every time I have reason to set foot in the state building.

Along with that old Mount Prospect squad car jumping over the 95th Street bridge in "The Blues Brothers," that would be a "top three" in my mind. It’s scary that some of the images of Chicago that stick most closely in my head are things that never really happened – even though I can picture every lasting detail.

Anyway, all these images are what popped into my head when I learned Tuesday of the death this week of Wilder -- whose career may well extend beyond those films he made with Peoria native Pryor. Particularly that train crash!

Yet they are among the bits of cinema that I truly can never tire of, finding myself stopping to watch them anytime I happen to be flipping through the mass of channels of programming we now have to pick from and stumble across them.

Beat that scene for a film finale!

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EXTRA: ‘Chiraq’ will only become lasting image if we let it become one

Learning that an alderman wants to penalize filmmaker Spike Lee if he persists with plans of making a movie about violence and action in inner-city Chicago to be called “Chiraq” makes me wonder why he has nothing better to do with his time.

The alderman in question is Will Burns of the 4^th Ward, who introduced a resolution this week that says if Lee really makes such a movie depicting black Chicago as overly violent and grotesque, then he should not qualify for the film production tax credits the city usually gives to movie productions.

BURNS IS CLAIMING he’s taking the moral high road by saying Lee can make any kind of film he wants and call it whatever name he chooses – even if the name he is considering is the derogatory label used by many black people to imply that Chicago has become the equivalent of an Iraqi war zone.

But all this is going to wind up doing is feeding into Lee’s self-righteous ego and personality and probably make him think he’s on some sort of crusade to expose the gritty and grotesque nature of some parts of our city.

Burns told reporter-types that such a film should lose tax credits because it would be derogatory to the city’s public image.

Nonsense! Not everything that makes it onto a movie screen (or in today’s way of viewing movies, onto whatever kind of screen one prefers to download their video entertainment) is “Up with People” positive.

HECK, MOST OF it is just downright stupid. Yet we don’t care.

I can think of a couple of Chicago-set films off the top of my head with images that are less than praiseworthy, but which no one in their right mind would complain about.

How about “Only the Lonely,” which starred John Candy and Jim Belushi as a couple of cops (although the CPD logos were conspicuously absent) who in one scene of the 1991 film decide to try to lower a dead body with a fire hose out of a window – rather than carry it down several flights of stairs (the elevator was broken).

But when the hose tears halfway through the effort, the body comes plummeting down to earth; with many dozens of spectators nearby.

THEN THERE’S “RUNNING Scared” from 1986, with Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines as a pair of undercover Chicago cops who wind up chasing a notorious drug dealer (played by Jimmy Smits) to the Thompson Center state government building, where they wind up thwarting his efforts by dumping his cocaine stash all over the state government building’s floor.

I can’t envision the Chicago Police Department thinking much of either image. At least I want to think they’re both over the top to where we can’t take them seriously.

Which ultimately is the problem with what Lee may wind up doing with his attempt to make a film set in Chicago, but which he says has violence conditions similar to places such as inner-city Philadelphia, Baltimore and his own home of New York.

Is the real problem that some political people just don’t want to have to address the reality of modern-day Chicago? It certainly is obvious enough that some people think we can get away with ignoring certain neighborhoods and focusing all attention on the tourist sites.

AS THOUGH THE people who actually live in Chicago and are native to the area are of lesser importance.

But trying to address those problems is complex, and bound to address certain people who are still offended by Lee’s 1989 production, “Do the Right Thing” and how the character “Mookie” could possibly turn on his boss, Sal, near the film’s end.

I guess ranting and raging about tax credits is a less complex issue to complain about.

Which, in the end, may be the real problem – our willingness to try to pretend that no one who isn’t exactly like ourselves even exists – that faces our society.

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Oh, Pipe down!

There have been moments during my years as a reporter-type person when someone who I was interviewing was saying something so ludicrous that what I really wanted to do was tell that person to be quiet.

Does this make you think 'casino'?

As in quit making a fool of yourself by proposing something so ludicrous that it’s never going to happen – and whose only purpose is for you to think you can force me to write about you as though you are serious.

NOT EVEN THE idea of asking a lot of nit-picking questions and writing a story pointing out the nonsense of the idea being spouted truly works – because it implies that the original idea was worth being acknowledged.

Which is why it was a good thing that I wasn’t present earlier this week when Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce President Jerry Roper came up with his own idea – turning the Thompson Center state government building into the new casino that is so desired by many city officials (including Mayor Rahm Emanuel).

Roper is one of those people who doesn’t think much of the building, which he said is a “burden” to state government. He does make one legitimate point – that at three decades old-and-counting, the structure has reached the point where it will need major renovations to ensure it will continue to be an acceptable office building for state government’s Chicago offices for decades to come.

So Roper said he thinks the state should unload the building on a casino developer, and let them handle the cost of renovating the 16-story building while they convert it into a casino.

FIRST OFF, THE idea of a casino at Randolph and Clark, just to the north of City Hall/the County Building is so ridiculous just because of its proximity to government. It would be a bad joke waiting to be told to put it there.

Plus the fact that any casino is going to have to have its own parking facilities – even if it means some sort of exclusive parking garage.

Those facts alone ought to be enough to show how ludicrous the idea truly is. Although when I think about it some more, I also realize that Roper’s idea is ridiculous because that square-block cylinder in use by state government isn’t anywhere near enough to house a legitimate casino.

For as Roper said he envisions it, the casino would be in that basement level where people can currently devour all forms of fast food, and on the ground level entrance where all those nondescript  stores now exist.

ALL OF THE upper floors that now house state agency offices would be converted into hotel rooms.

With the idea being that people could walk out of their room onto the balcony, look down and watch for themselves all of the gambling taking place beneath them.

Maybe he’d envision turning the governor’s office into some sort of exclusive suite, with people saying the slept in the space where much illicit activity took place (even though Rod Blagojevich rarely set foot in this particular office).

By that kind of logic, the ninth floor room straight back from the elevator bank (which once was a press room where reporter-types at the building would congregate) would become some sort of no-frills, discount room for cheap people not willing to pay much of anything.

I MOCK THIS casino idea because it’s just too ridiculous.

That basement level just doesn’t offer enough floor space for all the hard-core gambling that would be essential to a Chicago casino (a lot of people are going to have to lose lots of money in order for the facility to generate the kind of gross income that could then be taxed by the city and the state).

There’d probably be enough space for slot machines, which means you’d have a casino filled with cheap people looking to throw away their quarters. There would be none of the more-prominent “games of chance” that would generate the gambling activity of the real “high rollers.”

But aside from these serious attempts to point out the flaws of converting the James R. Thompson Center (nee, State of Illinois Center), there is one issue that ought to show, in and of itself, how ridiculous the idea is.

WHAT WOULD YOU do with state government?

There may be vacancies in office buildings scattered throughout “the Loop.” But the idea that agencies would move willy-nilly all across downtown Chicago – one agency here and another there – is absurd.

About the only people who would want this are those who can’t handle the fact that for some state agencies, the Chicago office is more important than the one in the capital city of Springfield. Or those who think that government buildings are supposed to be marble monstrosities decorated with gargoyles and look like they came from the 19^th Century.

They come up with all kinds of crazy ideas to justify trying to shut down the Thompson Center as a government building (which was one of Blagojevich’s more ridiculous ideas – and one that we should be thankful it never went anywhere).

WHICH IS WHY I’m glad that Gov. Pat Quinn didn’t get sucked too deeply into responding to Roper’s casino proposal. Don’t dignify nonsense with a serious response.

Besides, I don’t know how seriously I could take as a casino a building that I once saw appear in the 1986 film “Running Scared.”

I don’t know what was more ludicrous – the idea of bags of “cocaine” splattering on the atrium floor? Or the sight of actor Billy Crystal supposedly being a fierce Chicago cop who goes around wearing a Cubs jersey?

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EDITOR'S NOTE: I almost put this story in the same category -- the anonymous speculation that Rod Blagojevich could get Thirty years to Life in prison when he ultimately is sentenced. It is ridiculous to think it should be so long, unless you're the type of person who lets your political partisanship get the best of your common sense. If it does happen, we truly should be outraged.