The singing has started for Chicago's Millennium Park.

The impact of the $475 million site in the Loop is expected to be music for the local economy due to the high-end nature of the park's art, architecture and attractions.

Studies point to two million to three million additional tourist visits a year, said Ed Uhlir, the project's design director. "The bulk of visits will be from Chicagoans, but it will be an international tourist destination as well," he added.

The park is already generating other development, said Mayor Richard Daley. He cited the 57-story Heritage at Millennium Park condomium to the west and the 52-story Park Millennium apartment, already complete on the north, as examples.

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Property values adjacent to the park's Michigan Avenue site are reportedly increasing.
"The increase in tax [revenue] from the downtown for the city is enormous," the mayor added.

And the project might have received a boost in March from the Chicago Transit Board, which authorized the financing and development of a $213 million subway station at Block 37, the long-vacant property two blocks to the park's west. The CTA station is expected to serve as the main terminal for express rail service to and from O'Hare and Midway airports.

"I think people will come to Chicago just to see the park," said Alan Schachtman, senior vice president of Chicago-based U.S. Equities Realty LLC, a development firm.
"I think it will be a world-renowned site."

The Public Building Commission of Chicago deserves credit for assuming the development of a project that had been criticized early on and for getting the work done. The park is expected to open in late July.

Midwest Construction is honoring Kevin Gujral, executive director of the PBC, and Uhlir with its Owner and Developer of the Year award for completing the park and expanding its focus.

Uhlir, who is not a PBC employee, came out of retirement after a 30-year career in architecture, mostly with the Chicago Park District, to serve as a liaison between the city and project donors.

Sour Notes

Sour notes were heard about Millennium Park before the PBC took over the project in summer 2000 from the Chicago Department of Transportation.

Design flaws in the below-grade Millennium Park Garage, for instance, had caused cracks in more than 20 columns on the lower two of three levels, and column stabilization was required.

The project has also been knocked for allegedly being four years late and exceeding the original $150 million cost estimate announced in 1998.

But these complaints are misguided because the project's scope changed, Gujral said.

First, the original Millennium Park plans took shape when the city successfully negotiated for the air rights above the trench through which trains run on the Illinois Central Railroad. The 2,181-space Millennium Park Garage, which was completed in 2001 over the still-operating rail line, was constructed to support the park and help pay for its operation.

An additional five acres of highly valuable Loop property became available because of the renovation of the 1,800-space North Grant Park Garage. The underground facility had been deteriorating rapidly, and the roof slab's eastern portion, which carried soil and other elements, also needed rebuilding.

"An opportunity presented itself," Gujral said. "We said, 'We're going to rebuild the [North Grant Park Garage] structure because we have to. Let's expand Millennium Park and take advantage of that.'"

The cost for the North Grant Park Garage project, which was completed in November 2000, was added to the Millennium Park tab. And, the boundaries of the park expanded to 24.5 acres to incorporate some land above the North Grant Park Garage immediately along Michigan Avenue between Randolph and Monroe streets.

Second, an infusion of cash came in.

John Bryan, the former chairman and CEO of Chicago-based food giant Sara Lee Corp., originally pledged to raise $30 million for a few park enhancements, said Schachtman, the Chicago-based owner's representative for donors to Millennium Park Inc. The Pritzker family, which owns the Hyatt Hotels & Resorts chain, stepped in and pledged $15 million for a music pavilion and bridge, provided famed architect Frank Gehry of Los Angeles designed them.

The Gehry name worked like magic. In an incredible example of civic munificence, approximately $205 million has been raised, Uhlir said.

Donations fund two separate endowments, Uhlir added. About $60 million was raised for the Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance, a below-grade arts auditorium fronting Randolph Street that started in development before Millennium Park but was incorporated into the park.

The remaining $145 million in gifts help finance other park elements.

More than 80 donations of $1 million have been received. And eight major donations of $3 million or more - including $35 million from philanthropists Irving and Joan Harris and $10 million each from the Crown and Lurie families, in addition to the Pritzker gift - have come in.

"There were only a couple of known elements originally that were pretty undefined - a garden and a piece of art they (donors) were going to originally underwrite," Uhlir said.
"Now, they have underwritten all the major elements."

The windfall and the additional land allowed Millennium Park to expand in vision.

Nearly a dozen features have been incorporated in the project, including the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, the BP Pedestrian Bridge, Crown Fountain and Lurie Garden, in addition to the Millennium Park Garage and Harris theater. Others include a skating rink, McCormick Tribune plaza, sculpture, Bank One Promenade and Millennium Monument - a peristyle, or semicircular row of Doric columns inspired by the original in Grant Park between 1917 and 1953.

A commission went to another major architect, Thomas Beeby of Chicago-based Hammond Beeby Rupert Ainge Inc., for the Harris theater.

Artists with national and sometimes international reputations have also gotten work.

Anish Kapoor, a British sculptor, designed the stainless steel sculpture, reportedly his first commission in the United States. Kathryn Gustafson, a partner with Seattle-based Gustafson Guthrie Nichol in collaboration with Los Angeles-based theater set designer Robert Israel and Dutch planter Piet Oudolf, led the team for the Lurie Garden. And Jaume Plensa, a Spanish sculptor, came up with the multimedia Crown Fountain.

The city has picked up the remaining $270 million of the park's cost, a figure that includes funding from the Central Loop tax increment financing district. The city's contribution paid for the park caissons, the two garages, the pavilion enclosure, park finishes and other elements.

Early indications show that city residents are singing a sweet tune about Millennium Park.

In 2003, the revenue generated by parking fees at the Millennium Park Garage was $4.9 million, up 10 percent from 2002, according to the Chicago Department of Revenue. In 2003-2004, skate rentals at the rink were 77,667, up 20 percent from 2002-2003, according to the Chicago Park District.

"Is there a cooler skating rink?" said Paul O'Connor, executive director of World Business Chicago, a nonprofit agency financed with public and private funds to market the city. "[New York's] Rockefeller Center is nice because you have the skyscrapers, but we have a skyline."

Avant-Garde Elements

Ahead-of-its-time qualities virtually define Millennium Park.

The Crown Fountain, for example, includes two 50-ft.-tall towers made with 20,000 glass bricks that were custom fabricated in Pennsylvania with a minimal lead content to ensure clarity. Water will be pumped to the towers' tops and cascade into the basin people can walk across.

Imbedded within will be light-emitting-diode screens that will flash faces of Chicagoans. "People were videotaped still, and they were told to blow," Uhlir said. "At that point, there is a section of the LED screen with a hole in it, and water will shoot out."

The Kapoor sculpture, which looks like a metallic jelly beam, is similarly intriguing partly because it is made up of 168 stainless steel sheets, each with a specific shape, and a structural frame. The sheets are to be shipped from the fabricating plant in Oakland, Calif., and will be carefully welded onsite to avoid deforming the panels.

The east wall of the North Grant Park Garage was "massively reinforced" and a large haunch was placed on the back side to support the 110-ton sculpture.

"My favorite portion of everything we've done out here is the trellis," Gujral said. The 600-ft.-long, 300-ft.-wide trellis, under which the pavilion audience will sit, is made up of 22 arcing steel arms to hold the speakers for the Lares digital sound system and lights.

The pavilion will be the future home of the Grant Park Symphony and can be rented by other organizations.

"We are already getting more requests than we have actual dates for," Uhlir said.

The Coolness Factor

The importance of the coolness that Millennium Park represents goes well beyond civic pride.

A study that World Business Chicago did for the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University to brand the city showed that Chicago is perceived differently from other cities for three reasons.

Chicago has abundant business resources, great people and great quality of life, O'Connor said. Millennium Park's cultural offerings will likely play directly into the quality-of-life quotient.

"Our ability to draw talent, creative thinkers and knowledge workers who are enormously mobile is driven by the quality of life we offer them in the nonworking hours," he added. "The economy of the future is very much a talent war."

Millennium Park was already used as an example of a quality-of-life offering as part of the effort to lure the billion-dollar Boeing Co. here. Among other things the aerospace firm sought a city with a vibrant downtown and a city it could participate in fully as corporate citizen.

In April 2001, a dinner was held at the Art Institute of Chicago and attended by the A List of the city's political, business and cultural elite to convince Boeing executives to move the aerospace company here. The mayor attended and spoke.

He pointed to the east, where Grant Park lay, and noted that the undeveloped lakefront sprang from luminaries of the business community a century ago: architects Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett and merchant Montgomery Ward. Then he pointed to the north, where Millennium Park was under construction, to show that Chicago met the firm's criteria of a business-friendly city.

"There is no other place in America that is going to be able to show a park as a legacy of the second millennium and for which the business community made it happen by putting $100 million of its own money into it," O'Connor said.

Neighborhoods Focus

The stellar nature of Millennium Park makes it easy to forget that the PBC, which was founded in 1956, does other important work.

The agency currently has 125 projects and typically does $250 million to $300 million in construction a year, Gujral said.

Clients include the Chicago Public Schools, Chicago Park District, Chicago Public Library, City Colleges of Chicago, Chicago Police Department and Chicago Fire Department.

The PBC is implementing about half the projects that the $800 million Neighborhoods Alive 21, a bond issuance, is funding. The agency is building police stations, fire stations and libraries, and the other funds have been distributed to other agencies.

The agency is managing Skill Builders, a 14-week program of six different classes each year that trains students in the construction trades. The current class has 24 students, and there have been 360 graduates overall.

And, it has built 90 school playlots and 100 campus parks to create green space in schoolyards where once there was none.