Art gets the credit for the new energy in Chicago
by Burney Simpson
The end of a century is a good time to take stock. And an end-of-the-year visit with Lois Weisberg, Chicago's high-energy commissioner of culture, is a good time to reflect on some of the changes that have taken place in the city she clearly loves, and some of the changes still in the works.
Weisberg has strong ideas on both counts. After all, she's spent the past decade figuring out ways to bring Chicago back to life, with considerable success.
Not too long ago, a Saturday visit to Chicago's Loop was like taking a tour of a city after a neutron bomb had hit. The streets were barren, except for the occasional panhandler, and maybe a day-old newspaper whipsawing through the LaSalle Street canyon. Few people were likely to cross Daley Plaza, despite the Picasso, and few were delayed when the drawbridges on the Chicago River went up to let a single sailboat putter back to its dry-dock home.
In an effort to fill those empty streets, Weisberg says she focused on what was already in the Loop. There were incredible art galleries and museums, and architectural treasures. Even the clacking Elevated train had an old-fashioned charm. The skyline was just as beautiful on weekends.
So Weisberg brought the players together— the curators and the building owners, the police and the transit officials — and they worked together to enhance what urbanologists call "social capital." The theory is this: If they are packaged artfully, a city's attractions can amount to more than the sum of their parts.
| Today, Chicago's Loop is so vibrant people actually want to live there a fact that would astonish a time traveler from the reign of Mayor Daley the First. |
Over time, that city's government and business leaders launched creative tour programs, reinvigorated the Cultural Center, planted greenery and flowers along Chicago's streetscapes and enlivened downtown festivals. Buildings went up, hotels were remodeled. Now there's a new home for the Chicago Symphony and a new theater district. And the Loop's boundaries are stretching farther to the south and west.
Weisberg credits much of this new energy to the arts.
In fact, she believes every city needs to consider the arts a necessity, every bit as much as police or fire service. She believes every city needs a central area where all of its residents can gather and feel welcome. People who share ethnic or social backgrounds tend to congregate in neighborhoods. So, she argues, cities big and small need multicultural gathering places.
More particularly, Weisberg believes it's her city's responsibility to take the lead on projects and programs that might not realize immediate financial payoffs. That's because economic development is increasingly fueled by leisure dollars, and it's foolish to pretend Chicago isn't competing with every other city for that money.
Data bears this out. The number of Chicago travelers has grown from 22.3 million in 1992 to 27.6 million last year, according to the city. Chicago moved up two spots to become the third most-visited American city for leisure travelers, trailing Las Vegas and Orlando. And the number of visitors from overseas grew from 930,000 in 1993 to 1.2 million last year.
Still, not everyone agrees with Weisberg's philosophy or strategy.
It's great if the city wants to throw a party, counters Joseph Persky, who teaches economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "But it's a mistake to justify that as economic development." The recent public art exhibit Cows on Parade may be fun, he adds, but other factors mean more to a city's quality of life in the long run.
"Making sure the mass transit is working and the crime rate is low is more important than cows on Michigan Avenue. It's easy to get caught up in the public relations of these events."
Such concerns are valid. So is Persky's assessment that the rebirth of Chicago's downtown may have more to do with a booming economy and
6 / December 1999 Illinois Issues
changing demographics than the spread of art and culture. "We're seeing the influx of empty-nesters and young people who want to live downtown." And many of those new downtown residents have the cash to support such high-end art as plays and concerts.
What can't be disputed, though, is a statewide movement among cities to use culture as a revitalization tool.
Rockford, for instance, has two growing arts corridors that have helped to convince more young people to move downtown, according to state Rep. Doug Scott, a Democrat from that city and chairman of the Illinois House Urban Revitalization Committee. Rockford's Coronado Theatre will be rehabbed with the help of $1.25 million from the state. The city has already lined up $7 million of the eventual $17 million needed to reopen the 1920s-era theater for touring Broadway shows and midsized acts. The Riverfront Museum Park is a renovated Sears store. The Davis Festival Park plays host to city events and arts programs.
"Rockford is trying to rebuild its downtown with the arts as a major anchor," Scott says. "The arts are a proven, smart, long-term way to attract people to visit and to live downtown."
Meanwhile, smaller towns are considering ways to capitalize on some of their charm and attract visitors from within a smaller radius, 50 to 100 miles. Rural areas have a growing appeal that big cities can't duplicate. Small towns and agricultural communities are what historians call "cities of collective memory," according to David Perry, director of the Great Cities program at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
"Nine out of 10 of us have never been on a farm, but we have a notion of what they are like," says Perry, There's been an explosion of folk art weekends, rural music fests and regional theaters because people want to re-experience the small town life.
"These are important in economic development and how a region builds its quality of life," Perry says. Events also help get the locals out of their homes to celebrate their own communities.
Recognizing that, the state created the Illinois Main Street program to provide smaller communities with technical assistance on building downtown organizations, improving an area's appearance and developing promotional materials. That program is designed to help towns with populations under 50,000 and is working with about 50 communities. Main Street was moved last summer from the lieutenant governor's office to the Department of Commerce and Community Affairs, the state's economic development agency.
Smaller towns seem to be taking Weisberg's lead in using culture to revitalize their central business districts. But they might also want to study Chicago's future plans to get a picture of the potential pitfalls of cultural redevelopment.
That city has invested about $59 million in subsidies for the downtown theater district with the hope of creating a mini-Broadway, according to a study last August by the Neighborhood Capital Budget Group. Four classic movie theaters have been or are being rehabbed, and touring shows are hitting the boards. A parking garage and a renovated hotel are part of the plan, too. The city gathered producers and investors so that a steady stream of shows will be playing.
The city's planning department argues the investment will create hundreds of jobs and bring in an additional $1.6 billion in property, entertainment and sales taxes over 10 years. But there have been problems. One theater owner went bankrupt. A building owner objected to the city's quick-take land acquisition and held up the plans in court. And, to the dismay of preservationists, one landmark theater was gutted, though the facade was left standing.
None of this will mean much if the district is a success. But there are other concerns. Private interests have been standoffish, putting up only about $2 for every $1 the city has pumped into the district, according to the neighborhood group's study. Others wonder whether there will be enough theater-goers willing to pay $70 to $100 a ticket. City officials aren't worried, arguing they had to invest in such basics as sidewalks and roads, that the private interests have put up more money and that tourists will fill the seats.
Yet this question remains: If the theaters are in such demand, why can't private developers raise enough cash to rebuild them without public subsidies? And that's Persky's point. "You're using tax dollars to subsidize people who don't need a subsidy," he says.
"The argument is that this brings the middle class to the city. And that generates money for education and infrastructure and creates jobs. But we don't have the research that they're doing that."
The theater district is especially meaningful to Chicago, though, because it surrounds the infamous Block 37. According to Ross Miller's fascinating 1996 book, Here's the Deal: The Buying and Selling of the Great American City, the block had been home to several ornate Depression-era movie theaters and upscale retail stores. But by the 1970s. the shops were bedraggled and the theaters were showing low-budget fare.
Through a series of deals, Mayor Richard J. Daley had virtually the entire square block razed, thinking new development would bring back the middle class.
But the deals fell apart, due to bad timing, a souring economy and an abundance of office space. Every fewmonths, rumors fly about a new plan and a new developer. The space holds an ice rink in the winter. And in the summer it has been home to another Weisberg project, Gallery 37, an open-air art training program for inner-city, public school students. Gallery 37 has won national awards and has been duplicated in cities throughout the country, including Rockford.
But Block 37 is still empty.
Certainly, development plans come and go. Yet Weisberg's fundamental belief in the importance of government support for the arts has appeal. It reflects today's healthy economy. For now we can afford it.
And, as actors say, timing is everything. ˛
Illinois Issues December 1999 / 7