Chicago Daily Observer

Lois Wille looked like a deer caught in a car’s headlights.

Wille, an icon in the lakefront preservation community, had just announced at a press conference her support of the proposed controversial move of the Chicago Children’s Museum to Grant Park.

Rich Samuels, a reporter for WTTW Channel 11’s Chicago Tonight, had asked if she was “selling out.” Pause. “Selling out?” Wille asked. I’m trying to remember her exact response, as I was taken aback as much as she appeared to be. Her answer, as I recall, was calm and reasonable, even persuasive for someone (me) who has opposed the move. Certainly reasonable enough to wonder where the “sell out” question came from.

Wille’s credentials are unrivaled: editorial page editor at the Chicago Tribune, Sun-Times and Daily News, twice Pulitzer Prize winner, and, most relevant to the Grant Park debate, author of Forever Open Free and Clear: The Struggle ... Read More...

Playing the race card once again, Mayor Daley said today he’s not afraid of a protracted court fight over his plan to build a $100 million Children’s Museum in Grant Park because he’s firmly convinced he would win it.

“A 5-year-old child is worth fighting for. . . . I believe that as a parent. I believe that as a grandparent. I believe that as a mayor. . . . It’s very important to have a great children’s museum next to Millennium Park. I’m very passionate about it,” Daley said.

Seven months ago, the mayor took considerable heat for accusing residents of high-rises surrounding Daley Bicentennial Plaza who oppose the project of having racial motives.

Forty-second Ward alderman Brendan Reilly says he didn’t get very far when he sat down with officials from the Chicago Children’s Museum earlier this week to talk about potential sites for their new facility. They’re only interested in one: Grant Park.

“They’ve refused to consider any other locations, and they’ve defined their parameters so narrowly that it will be practically impossible to find a place for them anywhere but Grant Park,” he says.

This just in: an alderman decides not to cave.

Forty-second Ward alderman Brendan Reilly has helped forge an agreement that allows Children’s Memorial Hospital to proceed with its plans for a new facility in Streeterville while requiring it to conduct additional studies on the safety of a proposed heliport, a demand made by neighborhood residents.

He didn’t call them racists this time.

But this week Mayor Daley chastised Gold Coast opponents of a helipad Children’s Memorial Hospital wants to build as part of a new facility on Chicago Avenue east of Michigan. Some area residents have raised concerns about the safety of helicopters taking off and landing from the area, which is packed with residential and commercial high-rises. The mayor, though, insinuated that their questions were petty next to the possibility that kids could be saved, according to the Sun-Times. “So, once in a while, we have a helicopter landing. Why? To save your child—not your child, in a sense. But your child really. Another child coming from another city [who] does not have a Children’s Memorial Hospital. ... We will look back in 20 years what we did with this new and wonderful hospital.”