New plans for village
SOUTH SIDE | Park 'like Millennium' possible at site, alderman says
Air rights over a truck staging area for McCormick Place would be turned into "a park like Millennium Park" when a $1.1 billion Olympic Village is shifted west to the campus of Michael Reese Hospital, the local alderman said Friday.
Last month, the Community Development Commission gave Mayor Daley the go-ahead to acquire the 37-acre Michael Reese campus, setting the stage for negotiations with Medline Industries, owners of the property.
At the time, Chicago 2016 Chairman Pat Ryan held out the possibility of developing both the air rights and the hospital site with commercial space, market rate and affordable housing.
On Friday, Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th) told a different story.
"The plan would be to do residential on the dirt, do a park like Millennium Park on the railroad tracks and have it blend into the lakefront. You'll have a seamless South Side community as opposed to this island with Lake Shore Drive to the east and the railroad tracks to the west," Preckwinkle said.
"And with fewer support columns, you could continue to use the underground space for truck staging. That would have been very difficult with all of the caissons needed to support residential high-rises."
Arnold Randall, planning and development commissioner, confirmed that City Hall is "looking at the possibility of green space" on the air rights if the hospital site is acquired.
Preckwinkle said the city's plan is to negotiate with Medline and "to do this without using eminent domain." Jennifer Freedman, a spokeswoman for Medline, would not comment on the negotiations.
The Olympic Village on the Michael Reese campus would be a boon to the struggling hospital, but only if an agreement can be reached with Cook County to merge Reese with Provident Hospital.
"Cook County temporizes with respect to our proposal to bail them out of a substantial part of their massive deficit by not proceeding with our proposed plan to move Reese to Provident," Dr. Enrique Beckmann, Reese CEO, told the Community Development Commission last month.
Preckwinkle insisted that the city has "no intention" of closing the 126-year-old hospital.
"I see this, frankly, as an opportunity to work with you to secure a more permanent site," she told Beckmann at the commission meeting.