Four years ago Mayor Daley promised to put a park on the west side of State Street between Congress and Harrison–an opening in all the concrete and congestion. Today the neighborhood is still congested, but the city has decided to ditch the park–and is entertaining a proposal to build a 30-story, 226-unit condominium complex on the site. “That’s quite a switch,” says Kate Miles, a resident of the area. “I think everyone wants to know how plans for a park turned into a 30-story tower.”
That October, Daley publically endorsed the park and suggested it might also be used to honor veterans. Within a few months the Department of Planning and Development published a neighborhood master plan showing a park, and by early 1999 the Board of Education was moving to buy the parking lot and the Burger King.
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But negotiations proved tricky. The Burger King lot was purchased and the restaurant destroyed, but the parking lot’s owners wanted more than the board offered. The board, using its power of eminent domain, sued to seize the land. Generally public bodies hold the upper hand in such matters, since few property owners have the time or money to survive drawn-out litigation. But in this case the board blinked first. On November 15, 2000, it officially dropped its eminent domain case and even reimbursed the parking lot owners for their legal fees. Board and city officials say they had no choice–the asking price was just too high. Terri Texley, deputy commissioner for the city’s planning department, says, “The Board of Education just didn’t have enough money to complete the project.”
On October 25, 2001, she got her answer in the Chicago Journal. “State Street parking lots may go residential,” read the headline over staff writer Lydialyle Gibson’s front-page story. According to the article, the city was going to squeeze the park into the tiny Burger King space. The much larger parking lot would probably be reserved for a 30-story condominium built by the Concord Development Corporation.
It was a typical planning meeting, in that those who knew what was really going on weren’t there and those who were there either didn’t know or wouldn’t say. Daley was absent, as were Concord’s principals, though they sent their architect (Drew Ranieri), lawyer (Citron), and an assortment of other experts and advisers.
“Who told you that?” asked Haithcock.
A few residents proposed that the city broker a swap, giving Concord the right to develop Pritzker Park–a fenced-off rectangle of grass just north of the Harold Washington Library on State–in exchange for the lot. If that didn’t work, they said, they would try to raise money from the nearby colleges and universities to help cover the cost of buying the parking lot.
