No one disagrees that at least some of Chicago’s world-class status depends on the quality and vitality of its sports and arts institutions and venues. Granted, they are luxuries. But increasingly, they are seen as necessary luxuries, the difference between a nice place to visit and a great place to live.
They define a city’s character, its sense of momentum and its quality of life. They keep people from moving away, they lure business with their sparkle and they attract new residents and tourists.
They produce icons: Michael Jordan! Oprah! Sammy Sosa! R. Kelly! Jeremy Piven!
Jeremy Piven?
Perhaps the theatrical veteran and star of TV’s “Cupid” isn’t quite in the same league, but he underscores the depth and diversity of Chicago’s star lineup, which has embraced or produced over the years the likes of John Belushi, Bill Murray, Mike Ditka, Walter Payton, Bobby Hull, Laurie Metcalf, Gary Sinise, David Schwimmer, artist Ed Paschke, conductor Georg Solti, jazzman Ramsey Lewis and so many, many more.
Chicago’s sports and entertainment giants give an increasingly fragmented population something to cheer about, something to wear–literally–on their sleeves as an identifying mark. And they give prospective visitors a point of reference, an image of a brawny city with a cultured soul.
The city is betting much of its future on sports and culture, on recreation and tourism, on upscale leisure activities in a way that would have been ridiculed only two decades ago.
That image has been nurtured by the administration of Mayor Richard Daley, who, after flirting briefly with a proposal for a downtown casino, has shifted instead to a more general, family-oriented and high-cultural emphasis for his city’s entertainment centers–modeling Chicago after New York and London, in other words, not Las Vegas.
Signs of this emphasis are everywhere, from Navy Pier to the Museum Campus and the Loop theater district. There’s more to come: a lavish commercial indoor theme park from Disney, plans to build both a new concert pavilion and a music and dance theater as part of the Lakefront Millennium Park project in Grant Park and talk of moving Lookingglass Theatre into the Water Tower Pumping Station.
“The investment this city makes in culture, particularly theater, is unlike anything else outside New York,” said Michael Gennaro, managing director of Steppenwolf Theatre. “I ran a ballet company in Philadelphia and Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., before coming here (in 1995), and you just won’t find anything like the support we get in Chicago in those cities.”
Support is one thing that no one can fault, but strategy is more debatable and big questions remain about the viability of the city’s burgeoning theater district.
Will there be enough product to fill the theaters in the theater district and others on its fringe, including the landmark Auditorium Theatre? Will there really be enough programs to justify a music and dance theater in Millennium Park, since some of its potential users are struggling financially?
The next great challenge for the city administration may lie less in the nature of infrastructure and building and more in the manner of programming support–maybe even something on the order of London’s arts council, which nurtures artists and their projects. But as with Navy Pier and River North, the North Loop at least appears to be hedging its bets by going after commercial and non-commercial projects alike.
Then there is the stadium issue–the stadium issue, really, since only one team, the Bears, is not securely ensconced in a home field. What to do with Soldier Field (tear it down or renovate it?) and what, if anything, to offer the Bears appear to be questions that will linger into the next century.
The Bears stadium issue has, at times, seemed to be a sport on its own, with team president Michael McCaskey versus Daley an entertaining diversion. Certainly there’s a conflict here–but it also is emblematic of how unimportant a football stadium may be to the city’s economic future.
Although the return on investment is as much psychological as monetary for structures like theaters and playing fields, many argue that the dividends are hard to quantify–especially when it comes to sports.
“Attracting families and business takes a set of things, (including) a package of arts and sports,” said University of Chicago economist Allen Sanderson. “It’s, `How good are the schools? How safe are the streets? How good are the recreational facilities?’
“Spectator sports are part of the mix–but not necessarily their (competitive) quality because people view championships as ephemeral.”
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Still, lawmakers are eager to keep pro teams happy and are willing to spend money to do it.
Chicago has replaced two of its four major professional sporting venues in the ’90s. Comiskey Park, whose $150 million cost was financed by the sale of state bonds, supplanted its storied predecessor in 1991. United Center was largely built with private money, although $15 million–about 9 percent of the $175 million total cost–was shelled out by taxpayers in the form of real estate tax abatements and city and state grants.
The Bears have talked for years about abandoning 75-year-old Soldier Field, which is owned and operated by the Chicago Park District, for the suburbs or northwest Indiana. But proposal after proposal involving government financing has fizzled. The Bears appear to have no option but to renew their lease, which expires at the end of the 1999 season.
Even if the team did defect elsewhere in the region, economists debunk the notion that it would hurt the city–economically or otherwise.
“They’d still be called the Chicago Bears and not the Elk Grove Village Bears or whatever,” said Lake Forest College economics professor Robert Baade. “I don’t think moving the Jets and the Giants across the river to New Jersey changed the image people in New York have of themselves.”
Pepperdine University economist Dean Baim said he believes downtown stadiums are ideal because they attract downtown workers and pedestrian traffic for night games.
But, he said, “Chicago is already a cultural, financial and business center. If a team leaves, people are still going to come. . . . When you talk about where to build a Southern California regional office, Los Angeles (which has lost two NFL teams) still floats to the top first.”
Newcomers to Chicago, Sanderson said, “are stunned at how beautiful it is, how clean it is. . . . That’s what sticks in people’s minds, more than the fact that the Bulls are champions.”
While public desire to keep pro sports franchises happy seems limitless in mid-size cities such as Cleveland or Charlotte, Sanderson said a city with Chicago’s scale and reputation can afford to be more picky.
“I think it’s positive that Chicago hasn’t gotten into the kind of stadium envy that other cities have,” he said.
Arts envy, meanwhile, plagued Chicago for years. But a cultural renaissance in the past couple of decades changed all that.
“Even if certain projects don’t live up to their full potential, as a business investment and an approach to revitalizing areas, (supporting cultural activities) is brilliant,” said Michael Leavitt, a producer with Fox Theatricals, which is involved in remodeling and reopening the Palace Theatre in the Allegro Hotel at LaSalle and Randolph Streets.
It will be the fourth installment in the city’s newly touted theater district, along with the Oriental, the Chicago and the soon-to-be- relocated Goodman–a revitalization that has involved city investment in the form of tax increment financing.
“When we investigate coming into a market, we look at what’s there already,” said Art Leavitt, president of Disney Regional Entertainment, which is about to open Disney Quest, a five-story interactive theme park just west of Michigan Avenue.
“Everything from your rotating festivals to Taste of Chicago and the permanent sports and entertainment base, you see them thriving and you think there must be room for more,” said Leavitt, who is not related to Michael Leavitt. “I call it the critical mass theory. Excitement and entertainment feed on excitement and entertainment. We’d rather be in a crowded arena than an empty arena.”
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, which each managed important $100 million expansions in their physical facilities in recent years with virtually no government money, are venerable institutions. The Art Institute of Chicago boasts a membership of 160,000, the highest of any general art museum in the world. Some 1.5 million visitors came to the museum in 1998, while 280,000 visitors per year have come to the Museum of Contemporary Art since it opened its new home at 220 E. Chicago Ave. in 1996.
“Every study I’ve ever seen suggests culture brings in money to a city,” said Marj Halperin, executive director of the League of Chicago Theatres. “People who attend theater spend money, on hotels, taxis and dinners. And there’s not the safety, security and cleanup involved in a rock concert or sporting event.”
But critics of city involvement in the arts cite the use of tax incentives for projects such as the Oriental, whose owner, Livent Inc., filed for bankruptcy in November. The city provided an estimated half of the $35 million needed to renovate the theater. Critics now charge that box-office projections were optimistic, and it may be quite awhile before the tax money is recouped.
Another percolating arts issue is the feeling by some that the city pays attention only to downtown and certain neighborhoods as it seeks to support cultural institutions.
Neighborhood street fairs now grace Chicago year-round and have become one of the most important emblems of community life, but not every neighborhood has shared in the wealth.
Harry Meyer, assistant director of the Greater Southwest Development Corporation for the Marquette Park area, said, “We had a street fair about 12 years ago, just once, but most of our businesses didn’t find that it helped. When we were more solidly Lithuanian in population, we were more artsy. . . . I think the cultural aspect is a self-perpetuating problem. There’s a lack of culture, so you can’t attract culture.”
Could the city do more? “The parks, maybe,” Meyer said. “They bring in concerts in the summer, which is a nice thing. But I think more emphasis could be put on all the parks, including Marquette.”
At least one cultural leader doesn’t see things as a battle between large and small, downtown and the neighborhood.
“We’ve been here 28 years,” said Abena Joan Brown, president, producer and co-founder of the ETA Creative Arts Foundation on the South Side. “But I don’t begrudge money for the development of centers downtown. I think that would be shortsighted. People live in neighborhoods, and the Loop is on the move to become a neighborhood.
“It’s our newest neighborhood. I’m a Chicagoan too. I want to live in a world-class, international city.”