I have reported on this previously although I have not stressed it — the Monro East garage will soon be dug up down four levels and everything on top (tennis courts, playground) will be gone! for a couple or more of years. This is part of the 99-year lease deal of all of the Grant Park garages to Morgan Stanley approved a couple weeks ago.

It is not unexpected as the South and North (Millenium Park) garages were recently reconstructed and Monro East is next on the list, although the reconstruction might be considered a bit premature, it could last another 10 or 20 years ?

Personally I don’t care about the short-term loss of the tennis courts so much, but I think there should be some serious consideration to build a temporary playground for the kids during the couple or few years of construction. Note that the Lakeshore East playground is only for very young kids, the playground in Grant Park is much more varied, the equipment/installations are rated 2-5 years and 5-12 years. The Lakeshore East park equipment is for toddlers.

end editorial – Eric

From the Chicago Tribune — “Under the 99-year deal, Morgan Stanley will lease the Millennium Park Garage from the city and the Grant Park North, Grant Park South and East Monroe Street Garages from the Park District. Most of the proceeds will be used to retire debt on the garages and to make improvements in neighborhood parks.

“Mayor Richard Daley acknowledged the “emotional debate” but asserted that the lease represents “an outstanding deal for the taxpayers of the city of Chicago” and an opportunity to improve the parks.”

Click here to read more on the Chicago Tribune.

Despite the mayor’s comment about improving the parks… according to reports at a recent NEAR meeting, as part of the East Monroe Street garage reconstruction, the Park District Fieldhouse at the Daley Bicentenniel Plaza will be demolished and Morgan Stanley is not planning to rebuild it. – Eric

More from the Chicago Tribune –“Of the transaction total, $122 million would go toward improving neighborhood parks citywide over the next two years.”

Monday October 30th article in the Tribune.

From the Chicago Tribune — “$563 million plan would let private firm take over 4 facilities and perhaps raise their parking fees”

“$35 million would go to rebuild Daley Bicentennial Park after the reconstruction of the East Monroe garage, which lies beneath it”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0610140215oct14,1,2248865.story

According to Natarus who spoke at the recent NEAR meeting, there are presently no plans to reconstruct the Fieldhouse at the Daley Bi Plaza which will be torn down as part of the reconstruction of the East Monroe garage.

CHICAGO CHILDREN’S MUSEUM MOVING TO GRANT PARK

“Mayor Richard M. Daley announced today that Chicago Children’s Museum will move from Navy Pier to a new building to be constructed on the northeast corner of Monroe Street and Columbus Drive in Grant Park.

The Chicago Park District will provide the site, which is at the south end of Daley Bicentennial Plaza, and Allstate Insurance will donate $15 million toward the construction costs, the Mayor announced.”

Read the full press release.

“Wednesday’s announcement is the culmination of expansion plan effort started nearly a year ago as Peter England, CEO and president of the Chicago Children’s Museum, examined ways to get more space. In January, Mr. England announced he was eyeing Grant Park as a potential new home.”

Article from Crain’s Chicago Business.

Thousands of free hot dogs were given away in front of Daley Bicentenniel Plaza today by Ball Park Franks. This is part of the Great Hot Dog Taste Challenge. A contest was held to see who could prepare the best tasting hot dog using whatever condiments or ordornments people desired. Some people came quite prepared and put on a real display in serving the hot dogs.

Let us know if you know of any local events coming up that you would like for us to report. Send to editor@new-eastside.com.

Petitions distributed by network of volunteers yields thousands of signatures from area residents

The Chicago Children’s Museum (CCM) is considering a move from Navy Pier to Grant Park to accomodate expansion of the museum. The CCM drafted plans and studied the Daley Field House and the Daley Bicentennial Plaza location as the potential location for the new museum. As the plans were unveiled in Oct. 2005 and began to be discussed at community meetings, a strong opposition began to be formed by many New Eastside residents and users of the current facilities.

The Friends of Daley Bi (originally 4Kids) group was formed in Spring to help organize the opposition. Although the plan promises to replace the field house and skating rink for local use, the CCM would bring hundreds of thousands of additional visitors each year into the neighborhood which has already experienced a tremendous increase in both vehicular and pedestrian traffic with the ongoing Lakeshore East development and recent completion of Millenium Park including the Pritzker Pavilion and the Frank Gehry-designed BP Bridge which leads into the Daley Bicentennial Plaza.

The group helped to organize a neighborhood meeting with Alderman Natarus on May 10th to discuss the move. Flyers were passed out and delivered throughout the neighborhood and hundreds turned out for the meeting. At the conclusion of the meeting the Alderman promised to oppose to the plan. In recent weeks, the Alderman has appeared in interviews on both WBBM and Fox TV voicing the neighborhood’s opposition to the plan.

Petition Presented to Mayor Daley

The group’s next step was a petition drive to present to Mayor Daley. The drive netted almost 2,100 signatures by late June and was delivered to Natarus who said he would see that the Mayor would get them.

The CCM issue was originally on the agenda for the Chicago Plan Commission Meeting on Thursday, June 15. However, Natarus talked with Peter England, CEO of CCM, on June 6th and expressed that he would not like to see the CCM move to East Randolph. During the conversation, England mentioned that the CCM is also now considering a location just to the south along Monroe St. between Columbus Lake Shore Dr. This is the site of “The Green”, a mini-golf and restaurant open during summer months. England now plans to meet with Natarus to show new plans when they are ready and the issue will be brought before the Plan Commission at a later meeting. Opposition may come from boaters using Monroe Harbor who park close to LSD in the garage and might not be happy to lose those spaces to a museum.

Meta Brown, a local resident for over 20 years, started a blog entitled “Save Daley Bicentennial” ( http://savedaley.blogspot.com ). She estimates that the proposed 100,000 sq. ft. underground structure is equivalent to three full floors of a large high-rise building. The architect’s plan to use as much natural lighting as possible in an underground structure could involve a significant above ground structure in either of the proposed locations.

The CCM hopes to open at a location by 2009 and keep the construction period brief to minimize disruption. Additional meetings are to be held with community groups and the Grant Park Advisory Council.

This page on Richard Ward’s web site has a lot of very good arguments against moving the Children’s Museum next to the New Eastside neighborhood in Grant Park.
http://neweastsideforum.homestead.com/CCM2.html

I wonder if the Children’s Museum’s management expected such vocal and organized opposition to the proposed move.

I like some of the comments particularly –
“This business is on the first floor of the 400 building with large glass windows. Just recently, a criminal broke the glass, broke in, and stole computers and other valuables. Our neighborhood is starting to become a target for criminals.”

“In addition to the empty snack bags, bottles and things you would expect, we have also had to throw away dirty diapers, cigarette butts, alcohol bottles and other disgusting things that are not appropriate to mention on a public website (if you would like to know, ask any mom who has cleaned up the playground).”

“the traffic in our neighborhood has become more dangerous. The posted speed limit is 20 mph. Most cars travel down Randolph at 30 to 40 mph.” (I was in a taxi just yesterday that was doing near fifty coming up to the stop sign on Upper Randolph across from Buckingham Plaza. My whole family including my wife’s Dad and step-mom were in the car).

Anyway, I don’t really know what all Daley Bi has to offer and we definitely don’t take advantage of all of it, but my daughter goes to the Moms, Pops, and Tots classes on Tues and Thurs mornings, we take turns taking her, it’s either the baby-sitter, my wife, her Dad, and a couple times me who goes with her. Search the Chicago Park District web site. I rarely see any other Pops, they should just call it Nannies and Tots . But it’s definitely good for the kids, they see each other and play, interact, share toys (or not), and generally grow as small human beings. I wish it was every day, my daughter thrives on interaction with new people.

That said, we take her to the Children’s Museum a lot, it’s currently at Navy Pier. We have a membership and it’s not far, just across the Chicago River bridge. She loves the Children’s Museum but as a little person she’s a little afraid and vulnerable from the big kids. It seems like they routinely bus kids in who swamp the baby area with no regard to the signs “non-walkers only” and use the padded area as a landing place for jumps. Woah horsey!

Anyway, extrapolate that to the area surrounding, taxi’s doing 50 mph and all the kids launching themselves around the already crowded playground next to Daley Bi and you have a situation not so conducive to “tranquil city life” (oxymoron?).

When my wife and I were considering a place to live, we were just moving back into the city. We had been house-sitting / paying the mortgage for my parents who had just retired and bought a boat to live on for a year. ( I’d recommend for any adventurous person to do it, it’s definitely affordable if you have kids to pick up the mortgage for a bit ).

We looked at several places, in fact the New Eastside is the first place we looked. We decided to be in this neighborhood separated slightly from all the hub bub of the city because of the baby, the parks surrounding are nice.

Meta Brown has put up this web site to share information about the proposed move of the Chicago Children’s Museum to the north east corner of Grant Park. –
http://savedaley.blogspot.com/

Also see the link to the pdf “Ways you can help” –
http://users.rcn.com/msbrowna5/savedaley.pdf

Richard Ward has put up a lot of information regarding the proposed move of the Children’s Museum to the Daley Bicentennial Plaza including correspondence and notes which cover the major issues. There is an aerial photo depicting where the proposed museum would be constructed and photos of the area. There is also a poll asking web site visitors to share their views.

http://neweastsideforum.homestead.com/CCM.html

This article in Sun-Times sums up what’s going on.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-park08.html

The impetus for the move is that the Navy Pier location becomes very crowded during summer months.

The museum would be underground (“below grade”) and located next to the Grant Park’s Daley Bicentennial Plaza. It is believed that traffic would flow largely on intermediate Randolph. Residents believe this could lead to some congestion at the intersection of Randolph and Michigan but otherwise the top level streets Upper Randolph, Upper Columbus, and Upper Harbor would be largely unaffected. However, the outdoor playground in Grant Park next to the Daley Bicentennial Plaza would presumably get a lot more use.

Construction would last approximately 18 mos.

We moved to the new eastside neighborhood in October last year. Tanya told me to register a class for my daughter Elizabeth in the Daley Bicentennial Plaza. I found the following schedule:

details

Moms, Pops & Tots Interaction – Ages: 6mo-18mo
Restrictions: Children must be with an adult
Daley Bicentennial Plaza
337 E. Randolph
60601 (Map It)
Phone: 312.274.2764
T,10:00 am – 11:30 am
4/3/2006 – 6/11/2006
Base Fee: $45.00
Total Fee: $45.00
Gender: Co-Rec
Skill Level: Open to All
Activity Code: 24970

Moms, Pops & Tots Interaction – Ages: 18mo-36mo
Restrictions: Children must be with an adult
Daley Bicentennial Plaza
337 E. Randolph
60601 (Map It)
Phone: 312.274.2764
Th,10:00 am – 11:30 am
4/3/2006 – 6/11/2006
Base Fee: $45.00
Total Fee: $45.00
Gender: Co-Rec
Skill Level: Open to All
Activity Code: 24971

We have registered for her and started to go there three weeks ago. The first time she was so overwelmed as there are around 20-30 kids in the center and there are so many amazing toys too. She was watching at first and then try to crawl to get a couple of toys then she started to give a toy to a little girl. She like it so much to go there now and she will go to get a toy immediately. She has played with Margaret (one of the nannies in the building) and laughed so much. She also played Peekaboo spontaneously with Mark, who is just 2 years old.

Once I was sick and My husband took her there, he enjoyed watching her play. He has an important business call at 11:00 AM and had to leave although it was supposed to finish at 11:30 so he started to put her in the stroller at 10:55, she was so upset and wanted to come out and continue to play with the kids.

I highly recommend this place to kids who stay home, it is so much fun and all the people are very friendly. Plus it’s not expensive.

also visit ericfrost.com