Marina City Online is reporting that a bill awaiting Gov. Patrick Quinn's signature will give the beleaguered Museum of Broadcast Communications that $6 million former Illinois governor and Mad Magazine mascot Rod Blagojevich promised years before, and never delivered.It remains unclear how far that $6 million will go towards completing the Eckenhoff Saunders Architects design. Pepper Construction now carries a mortgage (nyaah-ha-ha!) on the structure as a part of a deal made this part April over a
claimed $4.5 million in unpaid construction bills, and is promised a payment of $4.79 million by March 1st of 2011. And that's just to get caught up. The original published price tag for the project was $21,000.000So I guess I shouldn't be expecting any solace this winter from one of those toasted cheese sandwiches from Johnny Rocket's, whose opening in the museum building was announced over a year ago. It was three-and-a-half years ago, just before everything ground to a screeching halt, that the curtain wall went up on the former parking garage at State and Kinzie, which we recorded in photo's here.
Bruce DuMont has a problem in that his museum is obsolete before it's been finished. There's probably more material available online for free than in the MBC archives. And I don't think all that many people are going to fork over $$$ to see some fragments from the Garfield Goose show along with the extant puppets.
ReplyDeleteThis museum, however well-intentioned, is not going to attract visitors.
ReplyDeleteThe Board of the museum should make plans to pay off the debt and put the property up for sale.