Regarding CRITICAL Children’s Museum Neighborhood Meeting on Monday, Sept. 10, 5:30 PM at the Daley Fieldhouse
Editorial – We at New-Eastside.com have witnessed a variety of ever-increasingly aggressive tactics to characterize the New Eastside neighborhood (which includes the Lakeshore East development) as being partially supportive of the Children’s Museum’s proposed move to the current site of the Daley Bicentenntial Fieldhouse.
The recent meetings at each building presented only one side of the issue - i.e. Children’s Museum staff and representatives proposing the new location for the building.
Nearby public facilities such as the Family Fun Festival in Millenium Park has had boxes for people to write letters to the Alderman in support of the move, with no place to mark or record opposition to the move.
Roving college-age petitioners have been spotted in the neighborhood and surrounding areas who were hired by the Children’s Museum and who clearly upon questioning had no clear idea about what was involved in the proposed move.
A firm in Topeka, KS has been calling neighborhood residents at odd hours to solicit support for the move from central Chicago residents.
In the latest move, the Children’s Museum organization is expected to bus in hundreds of supporters in advance of the upcoming “neighborhood meeting” hosted by NEAR to take all available seats and shut out real neighborhood residents from expressing their opposition to the proposed move ( see http://blog.new-eastside.com/final-meeting-on-the-childrens-museum/, especially the comments). This was originally intended to be a meeting (again it is hosted by NEAR) open only to neighborhood residents.
While I can’t fault the Children’s Museum for being aggressive about what they think could be a good move in location for them — their blatant attempts to mis-characterize our neighborhood is regrettable.
While we hope the best for the Children’s Museum (our own children love it), we must condemn the current administration’s recent activities and hope the neighborhood is able to prevail in this issue and prevent the Children’s Museum from relocating across the street in Grant Park.
