Some two decades after Millennium Park opened, it’s time for the “next big thing” downtown, say a group of civic, business and community leaders.
Calling themselves “Team Culture,” the group wants to reimagine major parts of downtown — filling vacant, often shadowy spaces with light and art.
“There have been two things in recent history that changed downtown. One was the Theatre District and the other was Millennium Park. It’s time for culture to do it all over again,” Lou Raizin, president and CEO of Broadway in Chicago, told a lunchtime gathering Tuesday at the City Club of Chicago at Maggiano’s Banquets downtown.
He spoke of the potential for “huge economic opportunity,” pointing out that New York’s nighttime economy generates about $35 billion annually and supports some 300,000 jobs.
Raizin and his supporters envision expanding the use of the city’s existing spaces, such as having a barge, on the Chicago River, that’s turned into a concert venue, or perhaps one that holds a farmer’s market. (Music of the Baroque presented a full concert last summer from a boat moving along the river.)
In this rendering, a floating farmer’s market would make stops along the Chicago River on different days of the week, according to the newly formed Team Culture.
And they imagine putting art in unexpected places, such as some of Chicago’s alleyways. A similar project in Detroit has created one of the “must-see” cultural things for visitors to the Motor City, Raizin said.
Or what if Lower Wacker Drive could be transformed into an “urban festival” site? Or if art were to illuminate the gloomy below-ground corridors of the Chicago Pedway?
“What if at eight o’clock at night, you’ve gone to dinner, you’ve gone to a show, and a section of the pedway turns into a digital [light] experience?” Raizin said.
How State Street might look with new art installations, according to Team Culture.
There were more questions than answers Tuesday, with Raizin and his would-be collaborators unsure where the money to fund the projects might come from.
“We are talking to a number of people,” Raizin said after the presentation, declining to mention names. “We are very close.”
“This is as much about the government getting out of the way and lifting constraints as it is about what we ask the government to do for us,” said Civic Federation President Joe Ferguson, who’s part of Team Culture.
