It wasn’t the brightest thing to do on a sweltering 90º+ day, but after the Dragon Boat races, there was a half hour wait for the water taxi to take me back downtown, so why not take a stroll in Ping Tom Park? I remembered you used to be able to see The 78 from the north end of the park, so I walked all the way there, only to be enticed by a single jogger running past the boundary.
...until passenger rail died and they were demolished in the 1970’s to leave perhaps the biggest vacant lot in Chicago.
It remained fallow, populated only by homeless encampments along the river, until spiraling into a series of ambitious plans and broken promises.
In 2002 it was acquired by Tony Rezko, a grifter who began his career running fast food franchises and worked his way up to equal-opportunity, bi-partisan bribery, most prominently to Illinois’ Alfred E. Neuman of a governor Rod Blagojevch. He hoped to lure an IKEA to “The 78,” named after becoming Chicago’s 78th official community area. They passed, and soon he was turning to the city for $140 million in Tax-Increment-Financing (TIF) for another plan, for 4,600 housing units and a big shopping center.
None of this happened, and poor Rezko eventually found himself bundled off to prison for his various frauds. In 2017, The 78 was one of 10 Chicago’s sites proposed to Amazon in its HQ2 competition scamming 200+ cities into wasting massive resources on bidding for how many billions could be squeezed out from the winner in “incentive” subsidies.
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| Amazon HQ2 proposal |
Chicago made the list of finalists, but lost in the end, reportedly due to high crime rates (this under St. Rahm, now plumping to be our President.)
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| Related Midwest proposal for The 78 |
For an undisclosed price, Related Midwest picked up the property in 2018 with lovely renderings of a never-to-be $7billion development, including half a billion in TIF subsidies.
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| Rivers Casino proposal for The 78 |
In 2018, The 78 became the Rivers 78 entry in the great Chicago Casino sweepstakes, complete with a 1,000-foot-high observation tower, and a slew of community pushback. Another not-to-be, as Bally’s won, for the right to build our new suckers’ paradise on the north side’s former Tribune Freedom Center site.
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| Discovery Partners Institute, original design |
Then in 2020 came the announcement that the U of I was going to build a $230 million headquarters at 15th and Wells for its Discovery Partners Institute. But soon the stunning building design from Rem Koolhaas/OMA-AMO/Shohei Shigematsu was scrapped for something far more prosaic (and undoubtedly much cheaper)...
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| Discovery Partners Institute, revised design |
...with construction to begin in 2024. In October of that year, with construction already underway, the U of I pulled the plug and cancelled the project, moving to the new Quantum Tech Valhalla announced for South Works at 79th street.
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| White Sox "idea" for a stadium at The 78 |
Earlier that year, the White Sox threw out “an idea-not a proposal” for moving from their hallowed Bridgeport grounds to a shiny new stadium at The 78. Unfortunately. Gov J.B. Pritzker seems disinclined to come up with $1billion+ in state subsidies for the White Sox pipe dream. (The bonds issued for the construction of current Sox Park a quarter century ago have yet to be repaid.)
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| Chicago Fire Soccer Stadium at The 78, rendering from Gensler |
Enter Joe Mansueto, who had the audacity to announce this month he plans to build a $650 million, Gensler-designed stadium for his Chicago Fire soccer team - with his own money. The history of The 78 indicates no balloon of hope ever goes unburst, but the predominantly private funding - the city would still use some TIF funds to extend streets where none now exist - may be the one that breaks through.
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| rendering of the Wells-Wentworth Connector from 2019 |
Financed with TIF funds, it was completed a couple of years ago, although it remained fenced off until finally opening for public use this past May. But instead of fronting a new city, it's currently a very pristine roadway, complete with bike lanes and landscaping, stranded in a vast plain of nothingness.
The foursome at play on Saturday outnumbered all the other people I encountered on my half-mile trek: that jogger, someone on a scooter, someone returning from Target. The 78 itself is almost all untamed (natural) growth, with a wealth of wildflowers...
... remnants of unrealized projects of the past ...
... and spectacular urban vistas in the distance.
I didn’t see any way to get up to the Roosevelt Road viaduct, but there’s a passage under it, with its own interesting architecture.
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| relief on the Roosevelt Road viaduct |
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| underneath the Roosevelt Road viaduct |
Beyond, there’s access to the Roosevelt Collection shopping center with its cinemas recently reopened by AMC, but you have to walk up to Polk Street to be able to continue east through a passage under the railroad viaduct. You can still see a section of wall from the demolished Grand Central Station that Bertrand Goldberg incorporated into his design for River City.
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| Bertrand Goldberg-designed River City, with wall from demolished Grand Central Station |
I highly recommend taking this walk through this unique, slightly surreal landscape. I look forward to taking it again myself, in less stroke-inducing weather, and to seeing if the umpteenth time is the charm for The 78.
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