Museum's Grant Park plan hits new hurdle

The drive to move the Chicago Children's Museum to Grant Park hit a new snag Friday as the watchdog group Friends of the Parks said it cannot support the plan in its current form.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/581034,CST-NWS-mus30.article

Snag - or Solution.. the idea to redesign it to put it completely underground came up in the press with Reilly as well recently.

I guess it could boil down to whether they really want to win the location that badly (after spending so many resources in the past several months trying to push through this location) in exchange for having to have a terrible, underground design.

In my opinion that would be a LOSE-LOSE sitatuation for everyone, Randolph St. would have the congestion of all the new Lakeshore East buildings and a CCM Learning Center, and the Children's Museum would be in a cave.

Hopefully they are not that pig-headed and go back to the drawing board with an expansive design in Northerly Island or in another neighborhood that could benefit economically.

Eric

Blaire Kamin wrote on the same topic --

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-mxa0928tempocoverchildrensep28,1,494795.story

Children's Museum debate hits new low

"Reilly himself said as much Tuesday, wondering whether the museum would "want all of their programming to essentially be in a cave."

"The underground museum trial-balloon is useful only because it represents the logical extreme of the museum's desperate attempts to comply with four landmark court decisions"