It`s not supposed to happen like this downtown, where the powerful prevail and little-old-ladies-in-tennis-shoes rarely get up a petition to change this or stop that.
Maybe that`s why nobody took Denise E. Dalka, a 60-year-old widow who wears Reeboks, very seriously.
Or at least they didn`t until she recently collected more than 100 signatures on a petition to stop the sale of liquor at the restaurants of Marina City and at nearby Harry Caray`s.
No beer at Harry Caray`s? Holy Cow! That got their attention.
Suddenly some powerful people, including one of Mayor Richard M. Daley`s top fundraisers, who happens to be an owner of Caray`s, are very concerned about what concerns Denise Dalka.
It all began two months ago, said Dalka, when she and other condominium owners ”got fed up to here” with the operators of Marina 300, a restaurant off the building`s lower-level lobby.
Designed in the early `60s by visionary architect Bertrand Goldberg, the complex at 300 N. State St. was conceived as a place where urban man could live, work, party and play without ever leaving its concrete embrace.
Beneath the familiar twin condo towers-the ones that look like upended corn cobs-are a restaurant, a shopping arcade, a health club, a theater, a bowling alley, and, of course, a marina.
But Goldberg`s space-station architecture has never been able to tame human nature. Or as Dalka puts it: ”A couple of things have gotten out of hand.”
On Friday and Saturday nights, she claims, there are private parties, many of them wedding receptions, booked into the Marina 300`s banquet room. Dalka described the parties as get-up-and-dance affairs, with disc jockeys and stereo speakers the size of washing machines.
”It`s a small room, and you don`t need those ghetto busters or whatever you call them,” Dalko opined. Nor, she said, do you need couples slipping away from the parties, into the quiet of the lobby, to express passionately their affection-or in some cases, their lack thereof-for one other.
Then there are the driving classes. On weekdays and Saturdays, the 300`s banquet room is rented to Northwestern University, which runs a defensive driving school for miscreant motorists remanded from traffic court.
The classes are no problem, Dalka said, but during their 10-minute breaks, the students spill into the condominium lobby to smoke, eat snacks and generally unwind.
”I don`t think they should take over the lobby of my building, six days a week, smoking and yelling obscenities,” Dalka said.
Dalka claimed her complaints to Marina 300 management fell on deaf ears, prompting her to approach a lawyer friend who knows a thing or two about turning up the heat, Chicago-style.
They came up with a plan to convince one-quarter of the voters in the 49th Precinct of the 42nd Ward, virtually all of whom live in the 380 apartments of Marina City, to sign a legal petition demanding that the following question be placed on the ballot in November`s general election:
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”Shall the sale of alcoholic liquor be prohibited in this precinct of the 42nd Ward of the City of Chicago?”
In other words, Dalka & Co. are threatening to vote the precinct dry unless some changes are made at the 300.
Last month, on primary election day, Dalka set up a card table near the 2nd floor recreation room and buttonholed residents as they arrived to vote.
”I had very few people who didn`t sign,” she said. ”A lot of them said, `I wish someone had done this sooner.` People were angry. It isn`t just me.”
Despite a screaming match with the owner of the 300, and despite a threat by Marina City Management Corp. to call the police, Dalka collected 110 signatures that day, or two-thirds of the number she`ll need to get the liquor question on the ballot.
”I can get the rest, no problem,” she said. ”I have until July 20. That`s the filing date.”
Besides signatures, Dalko`s effort got the attention of Paul Stepan, the real estate developer and chemical company heir who last year chaired mayoral candidate Richard M. Daley`s fundraising effort.
Stepan is also the principal owner of Harry Caray`s, the popular sports-theme restaurant at 33 W. Kinzie St. Mrs. Dalka has no beef with Stepan, but it happens that his restaurant is also part of the single-block precinct. So Harry Caray`s would be voted just as dry as the Marina 300.
”Everything has been settled,” Stepan said when asked about the little war next door. ”The traffic classes are out of there at the end of June. Everybody`s happy. There won`t be a referendum.”
Indeed, Mrs. Dalka said Stepan has worked wonders ”talking some sense”
into the owners of the 300. She allowed that she might not file the petitions after all, as long as she gets certain guarantees ”in writing.”
So Dalka may back off, though George Fountalas, manager of the 300, hardly sounds like a beaten man.
He confirmed that the traffic classes are gone as of June 30, but he predicted that his weekend parties will, if anything, get bigger.
”We`re doubling the size of the room so we can serve maybe 250 people,” Fountalas said. He claimed the real reason Dalka gets upset is that the classes, like the parties, are frequented by minorities. Dalka calls the racism charge ”ridiculous.”
At any rate, Stepan may have more hand-holding to do.
”She`s not going to run my business,” fumed Fountalas. ”She knew there was a restaurant down here when she bought her condo.”