A group of preservationists has been making the rounds of the neighborhood Olympic forums I wrote about last week, passing out flyers and pestering officials with questions. They’re not officially opposed to the Olympics, but anyone wondering whether Chicago needs the games should pay close attention to their battle to save the Michael Reese Hospital campus from demolition.
To actual opponents of Chicago’s Olympic bid, the focus on saving these empty buildings is a head-scratcher, since there are other, arguably more pressing reasons to stop the city from carrying out its plans—such as the probability that they could cost the city billions of dollars it doesn’t have. But the city’s response to the preservationists demonstrates how the Olympics are likely to drive public policy in this town for the next seven years if Chicago is picked to host them. What Mayor Daley’s Olympic planners think is in their best interest will trump every other concern, no matter how big or small.
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“There’s a very specific time line to get this built,” Arnold Randall, the bid committee’s director of neighborhood legacies, said at a recent hearing at the South Shore Cultural Center. “We feel to make that happen we need to begin demolition now.”
They said it again at a July 21 meeting at Olivet Baptist Church, at 31st and King Drive. Chaired by Fourth Ward alderman Toni Preckwinkle, the meeting was held to discuss potential impact of the Reese demolition on residents of the nearby Prairie Shores complex. Following a presentation by Cassandra Francis, director of Olympic Village development for Chicago 2016, Preckwinkle warned the preservationists she wasn’t going to take any of their questions until Prairie Shores residents were through with theirs.
It took more than two hours to answer most of the questions from Prairie Shores residents, leaving little time for the preservationists to say their piece. But someone did get to ask Preckwinkle the central question: why can’t demolition at least be delayed until October? Preckwinkle replied that questions about Reese would be addressed at an August 11 meeting.
Two days later, in fact, the city’s Public Building Commission awarded $11 million in contracts to two demolition firms, Brandenburg and Heneghan Wrecking, for asbestos removal and other “interior demolition.”
