December déjà vu: Keep museum out of park

In December, we wrote an editorial pointing out many reasons the Chicago Children's Museum should not be sited in Grant Park. Among them were an 1836 law that prohibits building there and the existence of many other, better, sites in the city.

            We could run the same editorial almost verbatim today, except that reasoned argument has been replaced by hyperbole in the battle over locating the museum.

            Mayor Richard M. Daley, the museum, and the Grant Park Advisory Council and Grant Park Conservancy want the facility built at Daley Bicentennial Plaza in Grant Park. Alderman Brendan Reilly, Friends of Downtown, and the New Eastside Association of Residents do not want the building constructed there.

            Reasonable people can have a difference of opinion and try to work out a compromise. Instead, Daley decided to short-circuit the discussion by playing the race card, implying that anyone who does not want the museum in the park must feel that way because they do not want Black and Hispanic kids downtown.

            That clearly is not the case. Not wanting a building constructed on parkland and wanting to follow the law do not make one a racist. Daley knows that, obviously. He just wanted to cut off debate.

            Reilly fulfilled his constitutional role of upholding the law and expressing the will of his constituents. Yet the mainstream media in this town immediately painted his legitimate opinion and actions with a political brush, saying "Oh-ho! A rookie Alderman defying the Mayor!" How about calling it an independently elected official actually doing his job?

            Our December opinion has not changed, although unfortunately GPAC/GPC's has. Back then, the organization was against the museum coming to a Monroe St.-Columbus Dr. site in Grant Park. Now, it is for the Daley Bicentennial Plaza site. We are disappointed in the organization's flip-flop. Grant Park still is Grant Park and does not need another building in it.

            As in December, there still are plenty of good sites in the city for the museum that do not require using up parkland. By the way, only nine percent of Chicago (motto "City in a Garden”) is parkland, less than half the percentage in New York; Washington, DC; San Francisco; or Boston. Can we afford to lose even more parkland, when there are blocks and blocks of unused land in the Illinois Medical District, close to downtown, to elevated trains and buses, and to medical facilities serving children, that would be perfect for the museum? How about the Museum Campus or Northerly Island? Families visiting existing museums could add one more to their trip.

             One area in which Aldermen sometimes show some gumption is when the Mayor tries to force something on a ward that its Alderman does not want. Reilly does not want the museum in his ward. We hope his aldermanic brethren vote with him instead of rubber-stamping the Mayor as the City Council does all too often.