Hear me out.
In November, the
Commission on Chicago Landmarks was presented
with a report calling on them to rescind the preliminary landmark designation they had given
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| Christopher Reed |
Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital earlier in the same meeting. Then, the Commission had voted unanimously to designate Prentice. Only minutes later, all of those same commissioners completely reversed course and voted to de-designate. All but one, Commissioner Christopher Reed.
Well, we can't have
that, can we? Reed is now gone. At the beginning of yesterday's monthly meeting, Chairman Rafael Leon announced that Reed had resigned, along with long-time Commission member and Chicago real estate legend John Baird. Baird was also the Commission's Secretary, and it was announced, in a rare display of honesty, that the new Secretary will be Andrew Mooney, an ex officio Commission member who, as Commissioner of Housing and Economic Development, is actually the person calling the shots.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel thinks so little of the Commission's importance that he could only be
bothered to fill one of the two vacancies. The sole new Commissioner is
Victor Ignacio Dziekiewicz,
whose name is misspelled “Dzlekiewicz” on the Commission's own website. If you were a cynic, you might be tempted to suspect that the primary attraction of the appointee was a name that placates two of the city's key ethnic constituencies - Hispanics and Poles - in a single person. (Actually, Dziekiewicz was born in Argentina.) To Emanuel's credit, Dziekiewicz is an architect, which makes him a lonely exception among the mayor's appointments to a Commission whose mission is all about architecture. Dz
iekiewicz's firm
DesignBridge, has done work on four schools for
UNO, the politically connected - and
increasingly controversial - operator of Chicago charter schools. (Six degrees of Juan Rangel?)
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A Modest Proposal . . .
