For immediate release, September 1, 1999
Contact: Alan Mammoser, Urban Planning graduate student at UIC and former member, South Campus Program Planning Committee <312-243-9439>
Parking on Maxwell Street?
Why have the UIC planners changed their parking policy? Why are they now putting the parking right in the middle of Maxwell Street?
Earlier iterations of the UIC plan put parking where parking belongs, south of the shopping area on Union Street, backing up against the unsightly expressway. With the Master Plan of August 1998, parking structures are shifted away from this location, up into the heart of Maxwell Street. Now, in the current plan, parking is expanded to an even greater degree, following both sides of the little street. What are they thinking?
They are taking aim at Maxwell Street again. Nobody does it better than UIC. Always taking aim. Do they really believe that people will pay $5 to park there, to visit their small, remote shopping district? More likely, the parking is relocated to eradicate the historical buildings, to claim space as theirs and to mark it as their own, right in the heart of old Maxwell Street.
The conventionality of this plan is crass. All that the UIC administrators seem to think about is parking. But we are in a city here! This is not the far-flung, low density suburbs. Parking doesn't need to be next to everything. People can walk, use transit, get around in many ways. The McClier plan knows this, as does the Decker-Vinci plan. But UIC shows no leadership: a university with no vision, unable to lead and to show its students respect for the past, a new road to the future.
Alan P. Mammoser
Former member, South Campus Program Planning Committee, and
Graduate Student at UIC
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