As Prentice is beaten into the Ground, Three New Towers Sink Their Roots

click images for larger view

The concrete is so clean, you could mistake it for new construction, if it weren't for violent chewing at its edges and the mangled rebar shooting out like raw exposed nerves after a butchered extraction.

The office podium beneath Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital, which the feckless Commission on Chicago Landmarks declared a landmark only to revoke the designation only minutes later, is being demolished in anticipation of bringing down the iconic cloverleaf concrete towers above it.  Northwestern University is still claiming it will begin construction for a new research lab on the site by 2015.  However, as Blair Kamin mentioned in the Trib, Northwestern also promised a world-class architectural competition for the new design, but out of a world of great architects, managed to wind up with three finalists that are all Chicago firms who just happened to be among the missing from a Who's-Who roster of local and international architects who demanded Northwestern save the Goldberg masterwork.  

As Prentice is beaten into the earth, two new projects have started to burrow their roots.

Just a block to the south, on the site of the former stable that was, for decades,  the CBS studios . . .

. . . Prentice's neighbor, the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, has begun work on The Ability Institute of RIC, a half-billion-dollar, million square-foot+, 27-story tower by HDR and Gensler,  Moving day scheduled for 2017. 

 

 

At State and Pearson, a half-block formerly occupied by a surface parking lot where the Tempo restaurant used to be, along with a series of low-rise buildings that once included an Ace hardware. . .

 . . .  and a five story apartment on the corner . . .

 . . .  is in the early throes of sinking foundations for two structures.

 

 

 

 

At Pearson Street, there'll be a ten-story new home for Loyola's Quinlan School of Business, whose brick-and-glass facades will match that of the current Quinlan School building across the street. 

At Chestnut, a 35-story apartment tower, 845 North State, will rise, with a glass facade.  Both buildings are designed by Solomon Cordwell Buenz.  The apartment tower is scheduled for completion in 2015.

At the Northwestern Medical Campus: One up; One Down

One up . . .

 

 

 Read More:

Sometimes, architectural traditions aren't really worth continuing:  Northwestern's Outpatient Care Facility


and one down . . .

 

 

 

Read More:

Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital - Landmark's Commission's Eloquent Requiem to the Building it's About to Destroy

Striking new images of Save Prentice's latest proposals and analysis to save Bertrand Goldberg's landmark.

Grossman and Kent's Final Word on how Chicago's Good-Old-Boys network rallied to Wreck Prentice

click images for larger view

It's the Chicago Tribune story that the Chicago Tribune would rather you not read.

The paper's Ron Grossman and Cheryl Kent have done a bang-up summary of the clout-ridden process that doomed the landmarking of Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital.  If you're one of the Trib's pathetic handful of digital subscribers (half that of the Sun-Times), you can read it.   For anyone else, it's carefully stuck behind their paywall.

Even if you don't read the Trib, it's well worth picking up  a copy today. (Try not to be shocked by the fact that the Trib just raised the price a whopping 50%, to $1.50.)  When politics get in the way doesn't really include anything we haven't written before in our own copious coverage of the battle for Prentice, but it fleshes out the details and mechanics of how the good-old-boys-network that runs the city - of which the Trib, which shilled relentlessly for Prentice's destruction, sees itself as a key member -  circles the wagons to support its own, in this case  Northwestern University, who has turned their substantial chunk of Streeterville into a kind of high-tech colonial plantation where the rules that constrain all the rest of us don't apply and truth is whatever they want it to be. 

Grossman and Kent document how Chicago's Department of Housing and Development simply dumped facts and figures they got from Northwestern into their report calling for Prentice's demolition.  Nothing was vetted or substantiated.  The Commission willingly became part of Northwestern's propaganda machine.

from left: Rafael Leon, Ernest Wong, Andrew Mooney, James Houlihan

In its portrait of Landmarks Commission Chairman Rafael Leon, the article is especially damning. ”I personally don't know all the details,” Leon told them, “We believe Northwestern.”  Leon was part of a cynical remaking of the Commission by Mayor Rahm Emanuel that dumped four commissioners and stuffed the body with connected associates, none of whom were architects, in direct violation of the directives of the Landmarks Ordinance.  Among them was former Cook County Assessor James Houlihan.  According to Grossman and Kent, he's also a senior consultant with a firm that brags about lobbying the city on behalf of over 25 clients.  Christopher Reed, the only commissioner to vote against demolishing Prentice, quit. “I was disgusted,” he told Grossman and Kent, “The process was hijacked by City Hall.”

Grossman and Kent underscore the uselessness of these appointed bodies.  As with the Plan Commission - which began as independent entity - the concept is that they provide an essential check on city government, representing the larger public in objectively vetting important city actions.  That role has long since been abrogated.  They have become rubber stamps that never - and I emphasize never - do anything other than follow the scripts they've been handed by the mayor.  At a time when the city is closing schools for lack of money, a Landmarks Commission that is nothing more than an expensive extension of the mayor's PR office is a pointless luxury we can no long afford.  Keep the staff; abolish the Commission.

Read:
Landmarks Commission Unanimously Votes Itself Completely Useless
A Modest Proposal: Abolish the Commission on Chicago Landmarks
An Open Letter to Mayor Emanuel on Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital

The Big Con Closes: Northwestern Wins the Battle to Destroy Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital

click images for larger view

 Today, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and Landmarks Illinois moved for a voluntary dismissal of their complaint in Cook County Circuit Court, signaling the end of their legal challenge against the City of Chicago and the Commission on Chicago Landmarks. 

At the end, even the members of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks were coming to the realize they were just part of a scam.  “I have this suspicion,” said commissioner James Houlihan, “that Northwestern has placed before us a false question.”

The false question at the bottom of Northwestern University's Big Con was simply this:  that there were two - and only two - choices.  One, you could have a new billion dollar research lab, state-of-the-art science, thousands of jobs, and countless lives saved.  Or, you stop Northwestern from demolishing Bertrand Goldberg's landmark Prentice Hospital, and find all of that  - the billion dollars, the jobs, the science, the healed lives - “melted into air, into thin air.”

Or at least that's what Northwestern's Eugene Sunshine told Houlihan when he asked what the university would do if Goldberg's building were landmarked.  “We don't really have an alternative,” was Sunshine's reply.  That's right.  One of the most distinguished institutions of learning in the world, home to cutting edge research and some of the most brilliant people on the globe, just couldn't figure out a way to keep from demolishing Prentice to create a vacant lot across from another massive two-block lot that's been vacant for five years.  When it came to finding an alternative to wrecking Prentice, all that brain power turned to quivering jello.

Hard to believe, no?  Well here's the thing.  It's not important that you believe; it's only important to appear to believe, and act accordingly. The only true catechism was acceptance of Northwestern's position atop the foodchain of clout, and a droit du seigneur that can never be questioned, only rationalized. 

Seigneur to seignuer, this is the world which Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel inhabits and understands, so it's no surprise he found himself, almost as soon as he was inaugurated, counseling Northwestern on how to mount the kind of clever PR campaign that would provide cover to its actions.  When that campaign finally bubbled to maturity, Rahm went public with a thumbs-down  op-ed in the Tribune, and the game was over.

But not before the Save Prentice Coalition mounted one of the most active and creative public interest campaigns I have ever witnessed.  Yes, I know - the patient died, but the coalition kept Prentice's heartbeat going long after Rahm's heavy pillow would have sent it flatlining.  All recognition is due to the coalition's partners, including Landmarks Illinois, Preservation Chicago, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, AIA/Chicago, DoCoMoMo Midwest, The Chicago Architectural Club, and more, and to individuals such as Lisa DiChiera, Christina Morris, Jonathan Fine, Stacey Pfingsten, Gunny Harboe, Jim Peters, Eric Herman, Zurich Esposito, Brian Strawn, Karla Sierralta, Bonnie McDonald and so many others.

Lest this appreciation, given the final outcome, seem little more than sentimentality, we should keep in mind that Save Prentice did achieve: creating a textbook model of how to run a public advocacy campaign.   It appealed to excellence, in the way it brought many of the world's leading architects to lend their voice to saving Prentice.  It appealed to creativity and practicality, in how it enlisted the best of both established and young architects and engineers to come up with a dazzling array of compelling, thoroughly-researched alternatives in which Northwestern's needs could be met while preserving Prentice.  They went to court and got a judge to question whether the way the Landmarks Commission signed off on destroying Prentice really met legal standards of due process.  (When they lost, it was not the the merits, but matters of jurisdiction.)  They found a capable partner in ASKG Public Strategies, and engaged social media in a creative and compelling way.  They encouraged and organized a broad range and expert and citizen testimony at public hearings whose results had already been pre-scripted.

Even if Save Prentice was not successful in its ultimate goal of keeping an indispensable piece of Chicago's architectural legacy in place for future generations, it revealed clearly the mendacity beneath so much of Northwestern's efforts, and it set a new standard for advocacy in the architectural preservation realm.

Every few decades, Chicago allows the powerful and connected to destroy a great masterpiece - the Garrick Theater, The Stock Exchange, and now Prentice.  Every time we say, “We won't let this happen again.” and each time, we've been proven wrong.  The Save Prentice coalition has built a strong foundation that makes it more likely that the next time may be different.  And that is no small thing.

Read the full coalition statement after the break:

Landmarks Commission Unanimously Votes Itself Completely Useless

from left: Rafael Leon, Ernest Wong, Andrew Mooney, James Houlihan

Thursday's monthly meeting of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks, dominated by the battle to save Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital,  was an shared exercise in the theater of the absurd.  Across nearly four hours of testimony from dozens of speakers on both sides, Commissioners pretended to be considering the testimony of the preservationists, and the preservationists pretended to believe that the commissioners might actually be listening.

Commissioner Andrew Mooney acknowledged that Northwestern University, which owns and seeks to destroy Prentice, has no plans to break ground for new construction on the site until 2015, at the earliest.  Commissioner James Houlihan was one several commissioners who seemed to suspect that the biggest snow job of the day wasn't the one that had just started to fall outside the County Building, where the meeting was held, but the dishonest and evasive campaign Northwestern waged to gut Prentice's landmark protection.  “I have this suspicion,” said Houlihan, “that  Northwestern has placed before us a false question.”

No matter.   You dance with the guy who brung you, and for the landmarks commissioners, that guy was Mayor Rahm Emanuel, to whom they all owed their appointment.  And Rahm's intentions were never a secret.  He was working with Northwestern to evade landmark designation for Prentice almost from the moment he took office.  Last October he went public with the imperial thumbs-down.

 “Will no one rid me of this troublesome building?” Rahm asked, almost off-handedly, to no one in particular. But the commissioners heard.  They bellied up to the barre, and danced the dance that was expected.  They first voted, unanimously, to accept an economic development report that called for  allowing Northwestern to demolish Prentice, and then, for good measure, voted unanimously to rescind the preliminary landmark designation that they had voted for, also unanimously, just last November.

Northwestern Senior VP of Business
and Finance Eugene Sunshine

The intended audience for this charade was not even in the room.  The object of this afternoon's performance was to persuade Cook County Circuit Court Judge Neil Cohen that his concerns about the perversion of due process in the November meeting, when the Commission first voted for designation and then rescinded it only minutes later, has now been made all better, so can he can finally lift the stay he put into effect last December and let demolition proceed.

The Save Prentice coalition issue a quick response:

We are disappointed that the Commission on Chicago Landmarks voted to again reject its unanimous preliminary landmark recommendation for Prentice. By the standard of Chicago’s Landmarks Ordinance, the Commission made its decision based on improper considerations in an improper forum.

Jim Peters

The Coalition's attorney Michael Rachlis indicated in his testimony that the validity of the Commission's actions will continue to be contested in court.  Former Chicago Director of Central Area Planning and preservationist Jim Peters - who had authored dozens of the same kind of  “HED” reports himself - testified that the economic development report submitted to the Landmarks Commission inaccurately addressed the key questions of Prentice's relation to the city's Comprehensive Plan, as well as Prentice's effect on its surrounding neighborhood.

If Judge Cohen lifts his stay, all indications are that Northwestern will proceed swiftly to smashing Prentice into dust.  The result will not be their much heralded new billion-dollar research lab, but a vacant lot, right across the street from two huge blocks that have also been vacant for over five years, with no definite plan for construction yet in sight.  In a burned-out neighborhood, vacant block after vacant block would be considered a major planning failure.  On the empty wastelands of the Northwestern campus, where the very gravel is marbled with insider clout, it's just business.

Reminder: Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice on Landmarks Agenda Today

click image for larger view.

Just a quick reminder that the Commission on Chicago Landmarks will again be considering the issue of landmarking Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital at their regular monthly meeting today. 

To put it honestly, if cynically, the Commission will vote a second time to rescind the preliminary landmark designation it granted in December in the expectation it will provide enough of an appearance of due public process to persuade Cook County Circuit Judge Neil Cohen to lift his stay on demolition.  (In December, the Commission had both unanimously granted Prentice preliminary landmark designation and then rescinded that action only minutes later.)  Preservation advocates will be out in force, and the meeting is open to the public: Thursday, February 7th, beginning at 12:45 p.m. in the County Board Room of the County Building, 118 North Clark.

Let's Kill it Twice! Chicago Landmarks Commission Set to Vote (Again) to demolish Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital

click images for larger view

[Update: Monday, January 28, 10:20 a.m.] Read the Save Prentice Coalition's response to the DHED report seeking the demolition of Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital, at the end of this post.

As I've written before, most people think that the job of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks is to safeguard Chicago's precious architectural legacy, and if you look at its long history and list of protected landmarks, as well as the outstanding work done, day in and day out, by the Commission's superb staff, you could be forgiven that conclusion.

In actually, however, the most fundamental role of the Commission is to make sure landmarking never gets in the way of connected developers.  Once upon a time, the Commission fought a long and ugly battle with developer John Buck over the destruction of Mies van der Rohe's Arts Club building for the marzipan nightmare that is 600 North Michigan.  The Commission lost. And it learned its lesson.

Farwell Building

Ever since, whenever there's a true battle for preservation, the odds are the Commission will find some way to be MIA, whether it be the case of the landmark Farwell Building, where the Commission just kept taking votes until it finally did the Daley administration's bidding of allowing the structure to be razed . . .

. . . or the Walter Gropius, Bauhaus inspired buildings of the Michael Reese Hospital campus, which the Commission willfully refused to even consider as Richard J. Daley executed a desperate scorched-earth demolition for a Chicago Olympics that would never be.

Kaplan Pavilion, Michael Reese Hospital

As the battle to save Bertrand Goldberg's landmark Prentice Hospital raged, the Commission did the bidding of new mayor Rahm Emanuel and yanked the matter off of its agenda, and kept it off, for over a year.  During that time, Mayor Emanuel actually counseled uber-connected, ultra-powerful Northwestern University on how to best counter a pesky, increasingly effective grass-roots campaign to save Prentice, guiding them to a former Emanuel operative who launched an astroturf campaign on Northwestern's behalf.

Then, in an act of truly dazzling cynicism, the Commission suddenly scheduled Prentice on its December agenda and in a matter of minutes unanimously granted preliminary landmark designation to Goldberg's masterpiece, and then gave its blessing to the building being destroyed.

A current exhibition at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, Reconsidering an Icon: Creative Conversations about Prentice Women's Hospital, includes a large number of often incredibly detailed alternatives for re-using the hospital building and integrating it into the University's need for a new Research Lab, and architect Jeanne Gang came up with still another compelling proposal for re-use.

image courtesy Studio/Gang, Jay Hoffman

[Update: Monday, January 28, 10:20 a.m.] The Save Prentice Coalition this morning issued its response to the DHED report seeking demolition of Prentice Hospital.  Read it at the end of this post.

They clearly give the lie to the claim that Prentice and future needs can't co-exist in a mutually beneficial way, but Northwestern can't be bothered.  Why should they, when they have the Mayor of Chicago firmly in their back pocket, cheerleading their fervent but ultimately specious mantra, “Goldberg must be destroyed!”

Court challenges have resulted in a stay in demolition, with preservationists having to refile their lawsuit - and have it accepted by Circuit Court Judge Neil Cohen - by a date in early in February to keep the bulldozers at bay.  

In preparation for that event, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks is set to again vote for Prentice's demolition at their next regular monthly meeting February 7th.  “God is in the details”, someone once said, probably while puffing on a good cigar, and it's telling that while the Commission's agendas have always been signed by secretary and long-time commissioner John Baird, February's Prentice-killing agenda is signed by a new secretary, Ex-Officio member and Housing and Economic Development head Andrew Mooney, lest anyone be the least bit confused as to who's really running things over there.

The court has intimated that the Commission voting for landmark designation and then voting against landmark designation in immediate succession just might be a violation of what the landmarks ordinance intended when it talked about open public process, so now we have this new charade in which the Commission will vote to rescind designation again, this coming February 7th.  Zero public hearings have been held, but now there's an entire month between the vote to designate and a vote to revoke designation, so we've made it all look legit, right Judge Cohen?

As usual, the draft resolution re-condemning Prentice to the dust reads as it were written by Northwestern itself.  You can check it all out for yourself here.

The Save Prentice coalition's response, after the break . . .

Another dismissal, another brief reprieve, another day in court for Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice

 Lizzie Schiffman of DNAinfo.comChicago is reporting that Cook County Circuit Judge Neil Cohen has dismissed Landmarks Illinois' lawsuit  against the Commission on Chicago Landmarks for revoking preliminary landmarks status for Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital only minutes after it unanimously voted for it.  Micah Maidenberg reports in Crain's Chicago Business that Cohen cited a previous Supreme Court decision as stopping him from overruling actions of the Commission.  Cohen left her current stay against the issuance of a demolition permit in place for another 30 days to allow the National Trust for Historic Preservation to amend its complaint in a way that would supposedly make it acceptable to the court.

The Save Prentice coalition issued a press release which includes this response:

We welcome the outcome of today's hearing, which keeps in place a stay preventing harm to historic Prentice Women's Hospital and provides an opportunity to amend our pleadings within 30 days. We appreciate the care with which Judge Cohen is considering this case.

Read:  Striking new images of Save Prentice's new proposals

Striking new images of Save Prentice's latest proposals and analysis to save Bertrand Goldberg landmark

click images for larger view

The Save Prentice Coalition is something like a cross between the Energizer Bunny and a reverse Joshua, intent on keeping Northwestern University from sending the walls of Bertrand Goldberg's landmark Prentice Hospital tumbling down.

They were at it again Thursday morning, with a press conference where architects and planners, led by former Chicago Deputy Planning Commissioner Jim Peters, refuted Northwestern's claims that - block upon block of adjacent vacant lots be damned - there was simply no alternative but reducing Goldberg's masterwork to rubble to create still another vacant lot for construction that it is - at minimum -  years away.

 “Northwestern's refusal,” said Peters, “to consider reuse alternatives for Prentice comes at a cost to the City of Chicago.  By reusing Prentice and building adjacent research space, Northwestern could support nearly 1,000 more permanent jobs and generate over $1 million in addiitional annual tax revenue for the citizens of Chicago.”

At the top of this post is a rendering presented by former Landmarks Commissioner Edward Torrez.  The BauerLatoza alternative would wrap Goldberg's structure in the curving embrace of a new, 25-story, million-square foot research lab building.   The old Prentice would provide offices and meeting spaces for the new facility.  The curve is the corridor that links the two structures.

 A second proposal, presented by Casmir Kujawa of Kujawa Architecture LLC . . .

. . . places a more angular research lab tower behind the current Prentice, to be be built in two phases to ultimately come up with the required 1.2 million square feet.  A bracket-like offset connects the new tower to the existing Lurie Research building.  Each floor includes the 25,000 square feet of space identified by Northwestern as an "intellectual critical mass" in size.  The 36-story would use air rights over Superior to provide a new visual marker for Northwestern's Streeterville campus.

Also on hand was Cyril Marsollier, to present the proposal he created with Wallo Villacorta that won the recent Future Prentice competition.  In this bold alternative, the two northernmost segments of Goldberg's structure are subsumed into a new research tower constructed behind it, but the entire building is made whole through reflection in the curtain wall of a new tower.

Common to all the schemes - and in stark contrast to Northwestern's own evasive statements - is the depth of analysis brought to both meeting Northwestern's stated requirements and envisioning Prentice as an integrated part of the Northwestern campus. In the case of David Urschel, Principal and Director of Healthcare Design at Loebl Schlossman and Hackl, this meant identifying a host of auxiliary functions that could be easily housed in a retrofitted Prentice . . .

. . . as well as coming up with a number of different planning schemes to integrate current buildings such as Prentice and the existing Lurie research building with needed new construction, both for labs, and for Northwestern Memorial's stated plans for expansion . . .

Lee Huang of the Philadelphia-based Econsolt Corporation presented an economic impact study documenting the potential benefits of saving Goldberg's Prentice in a way claimed to enhance property values of surrounding non-tax-exempt properties and increase property tax revenues by up to $820,000 per year.

You can download the study, as well as view all the other proposals and renderings presented Thursday, here.

It's no small irony that Northwestern's opponents seem to have put far more thought in meeting the university and hospital's future needs than the public evidence would suggest Northwestern has.  Ultimately, however, from Northwestern's perspective, this is not a battle about architecture or good planning, but about raw power, and about a bunch of good-old-boys at the top of the food chain bending the law to their own desires.

Marsollier and Villacorta alternative proposal

From the get-go, word on the street was that the fix was in and Prentice was toast.  But the Save Prentice coalition countered with a vigorous campaign that quickly enlisted many of the most respected architects - not just in Chicago but throughout the world - to decry Northwestern's civic vandalism.  Accustomed to their every whim being accepted without question, Northwestern was gobsmacked, turning to Mayor Rahm Emanuel for guidance.  The publicly neutral mayor had to show them how it was done, directing Northwestern to a Washington beltway lobbying firm whose Chicago office was run by a former Emanuel operative.

Known for covering over the misdeeds of Big Oil and Big Pharma, the lobbying firm came up with an aggressive - if meretricious  - counter-campaign that equated saving Prentice with throttling medical cures and killing jobs and patients.  And when their work was done, Emanuel was ready to pounce.  The issue of Prentice, which had been yanked from Landmarks Commission in June of 2011 and kept off for over a year, suddenly showed up on the November agenda for what Preservation Chicago's Jonathan Fine has aptly labeled a show trial.  Puppet-on-a-string commissioners dutifully followed a ludicrous but efficient Emanuel script in which Prentice was unanimously declared a landmark and then condemned for demolition, in the space of minutes within a single meeting.

floor plan, Marsollier and Villacorta alternative proposal

And that should have been that.  Instead, the Save Prentice Coalition went to court challenging the legality of the kangaroo court Commission meeting, and Cook County Judge Neil Cohen issued an injunction declaring that preliminary landmark designation remain in effect pending further consideration, a stay the judge continued in December.

With apologies to Monty Python, let us summarize the story so far . . .

City of Chicago, keeper of the demolition permits: Bring out your dead!
(a clover-leafed building is thrown on the cart)
Northwestern: here's one.
City of Chicago: that'll be ninepence.
Cloverleafed building on the cart:  I'm not dead.
City of Chicago: What?
Northwestern:  Nothing.  Here's your ninepence.
Cloverleafed building:  I'm not dead.
Circuit Court Judge:  'Ere - he say's he's not dead.
Northwestern:  Yes he is.
Save Prentice Coalition:  He isn't.
Northwestern:  Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
Save Prentice Coalition:  He's getting better.
Cloverleafed building leaps off the cart:  Look: I can be repurposed good as new!
Northwestern:  No, you can't.  You'll be stone dead in a moment.
Circuit Court Judge:  I can't take him like that.  It's against regulations.
Northwestern:  (glances furtively about to see if anyone notices the club behind its back.)  Can you hang around for a couple minutes? 

Next court hearing:  January 11th.