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Mark
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After attending the meeting, I can't figure out why they call it the Plan Commision because they clearly have none.
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dick daley
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they call it the plan commission because it is all part of the plan - my plan to do whatever the he ll i want.
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Life of Reilly
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I feel sorry for the Alderman. Not for the expected but resounding defeat tonight, but more importantly for the political retribution which will be meted out once this saga is over with; irrespective of the outcome.
I wouldn't be surprised to see an exit from Southbound Lake Shore Drive onto the upper level of East Randolph, if the museum issue somehow gets defeated in the courts.
It would be interesting to see if the local residents still give him a standing O when that happens.
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No building in Grant Park
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A priceless moment occurred after the dinner break when a lady at 340 E. Randolph kept asking the Chicago Children's Museum attorney questions and he blurted out something like the design is not final, which most people know to be the case.
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GreenHornet
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Too bad the bigot Chad doesn't know how to spell Israel correctly. Where did you go to school? Racist and ethnic bigots have no place in our democratic society. One could suggest that the Chad person go back to where his ancestors came from.
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Tom
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What the heck is a children's museum? Whatever goes on there, there is no way Grant Park is so important a site for it that it should be put underground.....how silly.
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Stop the Madness
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Congrats to the museum and its team for putting on a thorough, complete and informative presentation. After seeing it first hand I have to agree with the Rabbi...what's all the fuss about? I've listened to Ald. Reiley the past few weeks accuse the museum of changing its plans with every new criticism. Well, isn't that the point of a public debate? The same can be said about his excuses for opposes the project (I stopped counting after he changed his mind the fourth time). Now he asserts that private institutions/organizations can't use public land. Well, my group meets twice a week at the Wells Park fieldhouse in Lincoln Square. Does Ald. Rieley think we should be sued as well? Does he plan to take the hundreds of other museums, schools, non-profits, businesses, churches, community organizations and neighborhood associations who use park district facilities and land everyday to court? This argument, like his others before it, is nonsense. The bottom line is if the project is legal (and after listening to the park district's attorney, I believe it is), isn't using tax dollars to fund it (and it isn't...in fact the museum is contributing all the costs,$15 million, to rehab the Daley Bi fieldhouse), and it improves the park for both active and passive uses then I say let them build it.
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Little Guy
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Comrade Daley probably has the bulldozers there right now in the middle of the night. Why not put the museum on the old Meigs Field?
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Chicago Guy
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Tom wrote: What the heck is a children's museum? Whatever goes on there, there is no way Grant Park is so important a site for it that it should be put underground.....how silly. Anywhere you can find more than a million visitors a year, even a hotdog stand would be a gold mine. There's more than 145,000 acres of Chicago to the North, South and West of Grant Park that's not good enough for the CCM. Makes you wonder how much this giveaway is worth.
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A Pre-Wired Decision
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When you observe such blatantly pre-rigged proceedings and decisions that are made against the grain of logic and open discussion it becomes easy to see how proceedings spawn violent reactions in other societies. Extremely frustrating. Extremely discouraging. So much of our city's government is just plain rotten and wreaking with payola. Perhaps we should rename the city Myanmar.
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Tony
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Even though the result was not suprising, it was still amazing to see this kangaroo court in action.
There was not even a pretense that this would be fair and impartial!
What an eye -opener!
Rules were changed and no one could speak to the Montgomery Ward decisions or alternative locations!
The entire Commission plead ignorance to only the zoning and Lake Front Protection Ordinance. Fascinating stuff!!
4 to 1 opposition vs support! People were there for more than 12 hours!
Kudos to Carol Brown who recused herself because she is a Musuem Board member.
The same could not be said for Leon Finney whose wife hosted the Museum at Harris Fieldhouse last week and Alderman O'Connor, whose sister-in-law is the Project Manager for the Museum.
WOW!
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my kind of town
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The Childrens Machine is not an reaL accredited
Museum, that was finally acknowledged.
How could it be with basektball courts???????
It is a glorified Chuckie Cheese for the rich.
The Childrens Machine did not explain the need for
liquor licenses instead of simply using caterers
or pulling a permit for an event....booze is not
incidental to this interactive learning.
The Children's Machine knew they had the vote
yet they stacked the deck with a padded agenda....
ran out the clock up until newstime and took
a 30 minute break to thin out the crowd. Bad form.
The Children's Machine dug deep into technicalities.
These "planners" refused to dig for facts.
A new list of 30 rejected sites was promised,
but not produced for scrutiny....they had two years
and an extra nine hours to show the other sites.,..
that is DEEPLY DEEPLY suspect. Let's see the sites.
-No handicapped transit hubs nearby
3-5 city block walk in winter to the bus or train
-No realistic front drop-off linked to parking...the
parking directions from entry to lot took 3 minutes to read aloud.
-Views INSIDE THE MUSEUM but NO RENDERINGS
OUTSIDE...HMMMMM. That's deep.
-Planning Commissioners ARGUING with Alderman
Reilly and citizens... Ald. Stone took more than
than 15 minutes pontificating and said, "no one
listens." DEEP.
-Planning Commissioners DEFENDING their votes
DOWN TO the last second-COMMENTING, ARGUING
AND RATIONALIZING instead of just voting.
Bravo to Alderman Reilly and all the visionary
Aldermen who will defeat this. Kudos to the media.
Thank you to Commssioners Holleb and Richardson.
Shame on Leon Finney for dragging in Woodlawn.
And one lone Rabbi, gave the impression the
Chicago Council of Rabbis "blessed" it.
Deeply spiritual.
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my kind of town
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Stop the Madness wrote: Congrats to the museum and its team for putting on a thorough, complete and informative presentation. After seeing it first hand I have to agree with the Rabbi...what's all the fuss about? I've listened to Ald. Reiley the past few weeks accuse the museum of changing its plans with every new criticism. Well, isn't that the point of a public debate? The same can be said about his excuses for opposes the project (I stopped counting after he changed his mind the fourth time). Now he asserts that private institutions/organizations can't use public land. Well, my group meets twice a week at the Wells Park fieldhouse in Lincoln Square. Does Ald. Rieley think we should be sued as well? Does he plan to take the hundreds of other museums, schools, non-profits, businesses, churches, community organizations and neighborhood associations who use park district facilities and land everyday to court? This argument, like his others before it, is nonsense. The bottom line is if the project is legal (and after listening to the park district's attorney, I believe it is), isn't using tax dollars to fund it (and it isn't...in fact the museum is contributing all the costs,$15 million, to rehab the Daley Bi fieldhouse), and it improves the park for both active and passive uses then I say let them build it. Do you charge admission for your meetings and serve liquor? If so you may wish to seek space in Grant Park. No museum accreditation required.
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John
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Any proposed CCM in Grant Park must be free to the public. No fee whatsoever can be charged by the private CCM - not for visitors to the CCM and not for guests at the benefit events the CCM intends to host with their VERY large facility and request for a liquor license.
These conditions must be part of the deal if the public is to benefit from the changes to this protected and well preserved park.
The entire museum must also be completely beneath the ground level of the park, as is the existing field house, just 1/15th the size of the proposed CCM.
If the aldermen and Mayor Daley somehow manage to grant approval for the CCM to move from its current and well positioned Navy Pier home into Grant Park, then bring on the LAWYERS! I'll be first in line to donate to the legal fund to fight this attempt to grab public, protected park land for a private use!!!
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Chuck Jones
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Thank heavens.
I'm sorry that when opponents don't get their way they think it's either then end of democracy in Chicago or a grand conspiracy.
It was certainly clear to me after attending the meeting that facts were not going to get in the way of opponents trying to save the park for themselves no matter how little it makes sense.
I hope the rest of the alderman follow their lead.
If this works out, then I will be the best thing to happen in Chicago since Daley bulldozed the Mieg's Field in the middle of the night.
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Kathy
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The northern end of Grant Park is quite active and popular as open green space, filled with grass, trees, bushes and flowers for all the public to enjoy... and they do, thousands of them all year round.
I know, because I live across the street and visit the park daily with my kids. It's not just my neighbors that I see, but people from all over the city, even the suburbs. There is very little open space in downtown Chicago and Grant Park is a much needed break from development and "structured" use.
The CCM is exactly the sort of private use that so many before us have fought to prevent from grabbing this prime real estate. Thank goodness others have been prevented from building, but they certainly weren't kept away simply so that the CCM could grab the land for themselves now.
Let kids play and experience open space, with no buildings, no crowds and no entrance fees. Keep the CCM and all other development out of Grant Park. There are so many other sites from which the CCM can choose... please, leave the park to serve the best possible use. Let the park be a PARK!
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Parks Suck
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I say cement all of Grant Park, Hooray for Daley and the Board. We need more parking lots in downtown, tired of driving around 1 hour looking for a spot.
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Kathy
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If we are doomed to lose part of Grant Park to development, then let's not be so foolish as to accept that the CCM is the best possible option. Perhaps we should consider other organizations that would be better suited to move onto this valuable open park space.
Let's face it, kids don't care where the CCM is located. In fact, they probably have more fun at the Navy Pier location, jutting out so far into the lake and so unlike anything found anywhere else. Really to kids, Grant Park is just a park and looks pretty much like any other grassy park. It's only adults who really appreciate how special it is to have a park like that in the center of downtown Chicago, alongside so many bars, restaurants, theaters and lots of traffic.
So, if we're going to lose an important chunk of the park - and set a precedent for the loss of much more of Grant Park in the future - let's open the process to submissions by institutions, museums and architects from around the world. Let's give this some thought and build something unique, not just another one of dozens of Children's Museums / activity centers found in Chicago and the suburbs.
If the goal is just to build a better CCM, then Navy Pier offers room for the CCM to expand and their money will go much further than it will in Grant Park, given the complex engineering required to build an entirely new structure in Grant Park.
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Life of Reilly
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This meeting is yesterday's news, and now its time to look forward, rather than back. Quit whining and move on to the next phase of the process.
I spent some time going over the City Council roster, and given that a number of them would have voted in favor of the CCM tonight, this made the process that much easier.
In looking over the roster of Alderman, I created a spreadsheet segmented into likely Yes and No votes, and it looks to me like Daley will easily come up with the 26 votes that he needs for this proposal, perhaps with several to spare.
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Julie
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Stop the Madness wrote: I've listened to Ald. Reiley the past few weeks accuse the museum of changing its plans with every new criticism. Well, isn't that the point of a public debate? The same can be said about his excuses for opposes the project (I stopped counting after he changed his mind the fourth time). Now he asserts that private institutions/organizations can't use public land. Well, my group meets twice a week at the Wells Park fieldhouse in Lincoln Square. Does Ald. Rieley think we should be sued as well? Does he plan to take the hundreds of other museums, schools, non-profits, businesses, churches, community organizations and neighborhood associations who use park district facilities and land everyday to court? This argument, like his others before it, is nonsense. Alderman Reilly has presented several reasons why the CCM shouldn't be allowed to take public land in Grant Park for the relocation of their private CCM building. Citing different reasons is not a sign that he has changed his mind. It means that there are several reasons to oppose this land grab, many of which are spelled out by the laws that govern public land and Grant Park. The point about private organizations not be allowed to build private structures on public land, that's not something Reilly makes up as he goes along, it's the law governing Grant Park and other park district park land. As far as your comment about meeting at the Wells Park fieldhouse is concerned.. that's exactly the sort of thing the public is welcome to do in public facilities on public land! If there's any fee charged, it's charged by the park district and paid to the park district. The difference is that the CCM is not a public organization, it is private. If the CCM charges a fee or in any way restricts access to public land, then they would be violating the law. It appears that you have chosen to disregard many valid concerns expressed by Alderman Reilly and fail to comprehend many aspects of the difference between public and private use. This may explain why to many readers, it is YOUR arguments that make no sense.
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Judge it!
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