An editorial was written by one of the Chicago Suntimes's editors that merely repeats UIC's old and tired rhetoric -- confusing architectural preservation for historic preservation, not understanding how Blues or any folk idiom gets created, ignorant of the rich ethnic history of Maxwell Street, unaware of the large volume of vintage building stock destroyed in the last 10 years, denigrating the value of preservation in general, and not knowing that UIC's South Campus plan is more about private development than academic purpose. It was written as if one of UIC's PR staff wrote it. - SB
Alternatively, on this same day, John McCarron of the Chicago Tribune wrote a very sensible commentary on the City's Maxwell Street Plan.
Below are replies to the Suntimes editorial, "Let Maxwell Street go." You can read this UIC inspired editorial at <http://www.suntimes.com/output/commentary/aedit11.htm>.
Reply to Suntimes Maxwell Street Editorial (3/15/99)
Your pro-UIC Maxwell Street editorial ended with, "We would also point out, as a UIC official has, that the university is building a campus--not a shopping mall." The university is also building private, market rate housing on the site and is seeking public money, in the form of a tax increment financing district, to do it. They have also asserted many times that they want to create "a 24-hour campus," with retail and entertainment opportunities for students, which is fully consistent with the city's preservation proposal. Maxwell Street is a place where important things happened. That is why its physical environment needs to be preserved, as a tangible reminder of those events. UIC's rhetoric and tactics have been misleading and mean spirited from the beginning. You do no service to the debate by repeating their spin without a thorough examination of the issues.
Charles Cowdery
President, Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition
Email <cowdery@ix.netcom.com>
http://www2.netcom.com/~cowdery
Maxwell Street and UIC Tricks(3/16/99)
UIC choose to expand into an old historic neighborhood. Rather than fulfill its stewardship responsibilities, it attempts to shirk those obligations by using tricks and obfuscation. I am addressing each issue raised, point by point, in the Chicago Sun Times own editorial, Let Maxwell Street go, p. 29, 3/15/99.
1. "The University of Illinois at Chicago says it is prepared to preserve nine buildings in the old--and mostly decrepit and forlorn--Maxwell Street Market area in its campus expansion plan for the Near West Side."
REPLY: UIC has made no such commitment. UIC intends to save these buildings only temporarily and none of these buildings are on Maxwell Street. UIC intends to eventually tear them down after a period of 5 to 10 years. That is one of the reasons UIC fought to prevent these buildings being put on the National Register for Historic Places.
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2. "City planners commissioned a study that proposes saving 27 Maxwell Street area buildings and moving 11 of them, hoisted onto rollers, from Halsted and Roosevelt to Maxwell Street. The UIC plan makes far more sense to us than does the city's more ambitious idea for restoring a place and a time that have mostly vanished."
REPLY: There are 60 old buildings in the area, less than 10 % of the UIC expansion area That 'more ambitious' 27 building plan is the second compromise for preservation. An earlier plan was developed in May of 1998 in conjunction with UIC, the City, our Coalition, and City hired master preservation architects, Howard Decker and John Vinci. That plan called for saving 36 buildings. UIC agreed it was a win-win plan and then reneged on it.
The purpose of historic preservation is not to restore a time that has vanished. That is impossible. Preservation is about the future: how we want our cities to look and feel, its character and sense of place. Great cities around the world are great mostly because they have managed to preserve the physical texture of what was unique and important about them.
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3. "Very few of the storefront buildings still standing on and near Maxwell Street had any significant architectural value even when they were built. That they are old is basically their only virtue now."
REPLY: Some of the area's architects were very distinguished which is one of the reasons that the Chicago Architecture Foundation provides Maxwell Street tours. But the main reason for saving the buildings is about historic preservation which is a different purpose than purely architectural preservation. This is in the spirit of what President Clinton talked about in his most recent State of the Union address where he urged all Americans to preserve their heritage as a gift to the new century and told us that only by protecting and preserving our cultural treasures can we learn who we are as a nation.
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4. "One of the principal arguments advanced by Maxwell Street preservationists is that the old pushcart marketplace was the cradle of "urban electrified blues" music. We still have the music--and great music it is. But its history and survival are not in any way dependent on saving a couple dozen old buildings that had nothing to do with the music, which was, in fact, played on street corners and vacant lots, not in nightclubs or music halls."
REPLY: To really understand music, you have to understand how is was created. The music was created by a culture not just by a few important musicians and that culture is embodied in the bricks and mortar of that place. This was where the folk shopped, ate, socialized, and the musicians got their electricity from. Their food and clothing came from these buildings. Many of them had jobs in these building or lived upstairs of them, and their music was sold in these stores. It was an environment that has a long history and the music can only be fully appreciated in the context of its preserved physical remains.
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5. "Chicago is hardly running short of old buildings. It has wisely saved many of them as landmarks of our past."
REPLY: In the last 10 years, the City has demolished old buildings at record pace and we have needlessly lost important old buildings. People want to live in and near old buildings and are willing to pay money for that. The most prestigious neighborhoods in the city are those with the most rehabbed old buildings like Lincoln Park, Wicker Park, Hyde Park, Old Town, and Astor Street.
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6. "But there still are a lot of them for which the city would be best served by the wrecking ball. UIC says the city proposal for Maxwell Street, with greatly expanded retail space, could add $10.5 million to the cost of its campus expansion. Who is going to put up that money? The city? Preservation activists? They have come up with a lot of rhetoric--but no money and no prospect of raising any."
REPLY: The area has the basic ingredients for successful private development: location, location, and location - near the loop, near the lake, near the xways, and near a Metra stop. Add in 20% federal preservation tax credits, a TIF, over 120 years of history, and being the original home to some very large corporations, and you have a profitable recipe for development and preservation.
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7. "We would also point out, as a UIC official has, that the university is building a campus--not a shopping mall."
REPLY: UIC has slated most of the South campus expansion area for non-academic purposes: a performing arts center, a retail area, ball fields, and $400,000 private town house condominiums -- those condos alone taking up half the space. In 1994 UIC used the excuse of their need for research labs to get rid of the old market. Where are those labs? There were none planned and their never will be any there. It was a UIC trick back then and still is now.
Steve Balkin
Professor of Economics, Roosevelt University
Vice-President, Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition
Email <mar@interaccess.com>
Missing the Point About Maxwell Street(3/16/99)
Sir
The editorial "Let Maxwell Street Go" (15th March) misses the point about culture and heritage, and reads very much like a piece of propaganda emanating from the University of Illinois at Chicago. By focusing on the bottom line, you completely ignore aspects such as the amount of money and interest that has been generated by Chicago Blues over the years. Without Maxwell Street, there would be no Chicago Blues, and no Chicago Blues festival. Not only that, but the Blues tourists, who bring in millions of dollars of trade every year would not exist.
Maxwell Street is not just another bunch of old buildings, but was the gateway to Chicago for the migrants from the south. By agreeing to send in the wrecking ball you are agreeing to delete a part of history from the memory of Chicago. You should be championing the view that we are only guardians of the past, looking after and preserving the important parts of it for generations yet to come, because it is history that shapes the future.
As for the argument about the music being played on the periphery (street corners and vacant lots), the music was also played in the street, in front of the shops -- the shopkeepers provided the electricity for the musicians. And, despite what you say, it was played in clubs too. I suggest your writers check out issues 112-114 of the Blues & Rhythm magazine, which provides a fairly comprehensive list of Chicago Blues landmarks, many of which are now gone, thanks to the blind acceptance of the likes of UIC's blinkered view of what constitutes progress.
If Maxwell Street was in the UK, it would have been preserved as a living monument to the Blues. It does not take any great insight to see what the real possibilities are. Beale Street in Memphis, for example, shows what can be achieved with a bit of thought.
If you look just behind the bottom line you would see that the cost of saving 27 buildings is small beer when compared to the amount of money that could be generated. Work it out: $10M can be generated by 10 million people paying just $1 each. That is without even considering corporate donations, contributions from the City of Chicago, the U.S. government, and fund-raising events. Where there's a will, there's a way.
Gordon Baxter
Leicester, UK
Email <gordon.baxter@rrds.co.uk>
To the Editor: (3/15/99)
Had your editorial writer been working on the public relations staff at UIC, he or she could not have done a better job.
To say the area is rundown is to point the finger at one of the main culprits, UIC. UIC has been demolishing the buildings in this area for years, at the same time that it has discouraged local businessmen from upgrading their properties. Time and again, they have indicated their willingness to make improvements if the University would give them some reasonable assurance that they could continue to do business for a definite period of time. UIC has told them it can put no restrictions on its power of eminent domain (i.e., to exercise its right to take private property with compensation).
At best, UIC spokespeople have made vague predictions of when they might take property. Basically, the University wanted to buy up everything it could at the lowest possible price. No sensible businessman will spend thousands of dollars on rehabbing under those conditions. Moreover, UIC fought efforts to put the area on the National Register of Historic Sites, basically threatening non-cooperation with the State Historic Preservation Officer if he recommended the area for listing.
As for whether the area embodies a significant part of Chicago's history, your editorial writer wouldn't have to do much research to learn how important the Maxwell Street area has been. It's not just blues that developed there.
The rehabbing costs are a very small part of UIC's overall south campus project budget; without opening up the area to development by independent contractors, the University has no way of knowing what it will cost to rehab.
UIC has sought control over the whole area for its own purposes for years and seems no more willing than ever to make this a true collaboration with the local community and Chicago.
Elliot Zashin
Email <ezashin@jccofchicago.org>
Rebutal to "Let Maxwell Street go" (3/15/99)
Title: "Maxwell Street Ain't Goin' Nowehere!"
Dear Editors,
History is not a stagnant thing, but it takes people to make it live. It should be apparent that Chicago's beloved Maxwell Street is rising again -- as the Mayor's McClier plan proves. Having survived the wrecking-ball, the last structures can be brought together to form lasting bonds with the new UIC South Campus and the people of Pilsen. With a multi-use megastructure connecting the university with the public space, a secure 24 hour community can arise, complete with the kind of culture Chicagoans desire -- one with music, dance, ethnic food, the works.
I agree with one conclusion of the March 15th editorial, that the university should be "building a campus--not a shopping mall." People are tired of malls and "caracatecture" as opposed to architecture. This is why the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois should show what architects have learned from the failure of automobile-driven urban plans and return to its roots in organic design. Mulitple-use and density will over-come the "malling" effect, and students living on campus will be able feel a part of the surrounding community, rather than estranged as is the effect of what author James Howard Kunstler calls the "Geography of Nowhere."
Uniting old and new structures would bridge the past with the future in a walkable community where learning can be a celebration. Maxwell Street's history is un-erasable, and it is integral with education. Music has always helped learning. Students will love being on the same street as the home of Muddy Waters, Sol Alinsky, Johnnie Mae Dunson, Bertram Goldberg, Jimmy Lee Robinson, and Abraham Lincoln Marovitz. Blues and organic architecture are as Chicago as the Sun-Times -- and brought together they are unbeatable! As Paolo Soleri puts it, "The bridge between matter and spirit is matter becoming spirit." Maxwell Street is here to stay.
--Bob Rudner
brudner@arcologize.org
www.arcologize.org/arcologize.htm
Response to "Let Maxwell Street Go" (3/15/99)
The editorial "Let Maxwell Street Go" cites that the old Maxwell Street Market area is "mostly decrepit and forlorn," a characterization that is disingenuous given that the UIC has won every landbanking battle in the last 10 years, including having the market moved from its historic location and the demolition of a great majority of the area's buildings and businesses. In this climate, property owners have naturally been hesitant to invest fully in buildings they fear the wrecking ball will soon take from under them, and empty university-owned buildings are not always properly secured.
UIC is looking for excuses when it claims that the compromise plan of saving 27 buildings is too costly, because the 10 million dollar price tag of preservation is only 1% of the billion dollar cost for its entire South campus expansion project. That seems affordable, especially when one considers that this is the part of the project that could provide character, history, and a lively, versus sterile, feel to the area. There are many financing options that the UIC can employ. Unfortunately, it seems that the administrators at UIC perceive the Maxwell Street area as somehow unsuitable for their student population, and the lucrative residential housing developments they will create around the South Campus.
Personally, I have always felt comfortable and welcome in the area. I think that students and new residents would welcome the chance to eat a Maxwell Street Polish sausage at Jim's Originals and to shop for athletic wear, blues music, or at other new businesses, along with the area's current patrons. This site speaks to working class, immigrant/migrant, music, and business history like few others in Chicago and should be preserved -- many other cities have successfully embraced these types of sites to their benefit.
Laura Kamedulski
Chicago Historical Society
Email <Kamedulski@chicagohistory.org>
Reply to the Sun Times (3/15/99)
I was disappointed by the lack of clarity and factual omissions in your March 15 commentary piece "Let Maxwell St. go". Surely you can come up with a better argument against preserving old buildings than "That they are old is basically their only virtue now". After all, age is one of the main reasons that buildings become historic landmarks. Above and beyond the age of the remaining buildings (some of which, like Jim's Originals, date from before the Chicago Fire), they have historic value because they are all that is left of one of America's most famous neighborhoods. While it is true, as your editor points out, that many of the historic buildings in the Maxwell Street area are "decrepit and forlorn", a closer look reveals that virtually all abandoned buildings are owned by UIC, who evicted their tenants.
Virtually all the buildings that are NOT owned by UIC have thriving businesses in them, which serve the retail needs of neighboring residents in the same way that a shopping mall serves the retail needs of suburbanites. It's interesting that you would point out that UIC claims to be building a campus, not a shopping mall. Your failure to mention that the primary reason UIC wants to rip down the rest of the buildings is to erect a subdivision of $300,000 yuppie townhomes, shows a lack of journalistic integrity reminiscent of the Sun Time's Murdoch days. Who is going to pay for preservation? you ask. Why don't you mention who has been paying for the demolition, and who is supposed to finance the $500 million townhome construction project? Is UIC a private institution? Isn't the city in the processes of ratifying a TIF? Taxpayers have been paying for this mess for several years now, and will be paying for the South Campus Expansion project for years to come. Why is it that when tax payers try to voice their opinions as to how their money should be spent, anonymous editors such as yourself become so dismissive, patronizing and careless with facts?
Brian Mier
Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition
Email <bmier@ameritech.net>
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