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

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 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:



Statement from Save Prentice Coalition

Chicago – February 14, 2013 – 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. The Save Prentice Coalition issued the following statement:


Only months ago, it was uncertain whether the landmark status of historic Prentice Women’s Hospital would be considered in a public forum. Thousands of people in Chicago and around the globe helped bring the conversation about Bertrand Goldberg’s Modern masterpiece to Chicago’s Landmarks Commission, which unanimously declared Prentice worthy of landmark designation.

We continue to believe there were significant flaws with the process that granted and then removed landmark protection for Prentice. However, we feel that the landmarks process has run its course. When challenging issues come before the Landmarks Commission, all parties share an obligation to provide honest input, consider reuse alternatives and respect the ordinances and procedures. We continue to support the practical reuse options available to Northwestern University that will grow Chicago’s economy and preserve its world-class architectural and cultural heritage.

At its core, preservation helps cities grow and prosper. It creates jobs, boosts local economies, helps reduce our carbon footprint, and makes cities more dynamic, appealing and attractive. Members of the Save Prentice Coalition have a long history of working in partnership with the City of Chicago on a wide range of preservation issues, and we look forward to continuing this work.

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

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[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 . . .


Statement from Save Prentice Coalition Regarding the Commission on Chicago Landmarks’ Feb. 7 Agenda

Chicago – January 27, 2013 – The Save Prentice Coalition issued the following statement today in response to the Commission on Chicago Landmarks’ agenda for their February 7, 2013 meeting:
The City has acknowledged that the November 1, 2012 meeting of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks was deficient. Indeed, the presiding judge found that the amount of time and notice given for the Nov. 1 meeting was “arbitrary and not transparent.”

The Save Prentice Coalition has presented four detailed reuse plans that meet the research needs of Northwestern, create 1,560 more jobs than Northwestern's plan, and preserve a vital piece of our city's architectural heritage – Bertrand Goldberg’s Prentice. Regrettably, the University has refused even to discuss these options. Instead, the institution that owns 44% of Streeterville claims that options do not exist.

Meanwhile, the City’s revised DHED report, released Friday, merely rejects the Coalition’s economic projections with one paragraph, while parroting Northwestern University’s unsubstantiated assertions throughout the entire five-page document.

Currently, the meeting and proposed rejection of a preliminary landmark recommendation for Prentice violate the Landmarks Ordinance. The Landmarks Commissioners must hold a full hearing on Prentice, allow the Coalition to present evidence regarding the architectural value and integrity of this unique architectural milestone, and base their decision on the criteria set forth in the Ordinance. The Coalition encourages the Commission to keep this process transparent and non-preordained, to base its decision on the proper considerations, and to follow the letter and spirit of the Landmark Ordinance with respect to this important and historic building.


SAVEPRENTICE.ORG
About the Save Prentice Coalition
Save Prentice is a coalition of organizations that includes AIA Chicago, DoCoMoMo, Landmarks Illinois, The National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Preservation Chicago. Our mission is the preservation and reuse of the iconic – and now threatened – Prentice Women’s Hospital designed by noted Chicago architect Bertrand Goldberg in the early 1970s.

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

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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.

Stay against demolition of Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital remains, for now

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Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital will stand, at least through next January 11th.

That's the date set by Cook County Circuit Court Judge Neil Cohen for oral arguments on a City of Chicago motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Landmarks Illinois and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  That lawsuit challenged actions taken by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks on November 1st when the body first voted unanimously to grant preliminary landmark designation to Prentice Hospital, only to rescind designation little more than an hour later.  On November 15th, Judge Cohen ruled that preliminary landmark status will remain in effect until a ruling is made on the lawsuit.

The Chicago Architecture Foundation is currently hosting an exhibition, Reconsidering an Icon: Creative Conversations about Prentice Women's Hospital, that showcases the results of a competition in which 71 architects from 13 countries presented alternative proposals for retaining the Goldberg-designed structure.  Northwestern University is seeking to demolish the building to create a vacant lot for a new research lab to be built at a later date

Landmarks Commission's Eloquent Requiem to the Building it's About to Destroy

from the Landmarks Commission report

When I write about the Commission on Chicago Landmarks, I often make a clear distinction between the two parts, only one of which is useless, that make up this entity.

The first is the staff of the Commission, an incredibly dedicated group of knowledgeable professionals, whose work can be seen in the  Reports for Proposed/Designated Chicago Landmarks, which combines highly readable narratives with amazing scholarship in documenting each building proposed for landmark designation.  It is the job of the staff to preserve Chicago's architectural treasures.

The second is the actual Commission on Chicago Landmarks, a body appointed by the Mayor to vote on proposed designations and send them on to the City Council.  As much as it may appear otherwise, it is not the job of to preserve Chicago's architectural heritage.  The job of this body is to make sure landmarking never gets in the way of the whims of connected developers.  It is a job they do well, as illustrated in the case of the Farwell Building.  When the Commission, in an unprecedented show of backbone,  voted not to approve a cynical destruction of that designated landmark, Chairman David Mosena, a former chief of staff to Mayor Richard M. Daley, simply called a second meeting to reverse the vote.

from the Landmarks Commission report

The real function of the members of the Landmarks Commission will be on display again Thursday, when they will be called upon to ignore the evidence, abrogate their responsibility, and vote to destroy Bertrand Goldberg's iconic Prentice Hospital.  Right after they vote to save it.

The Commission staff has created a report thoroughly documenting how Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital qualifies for landmark designation.  To become a landmark, a building has to meet at least two of seven criteria.  Prentice meets four: historical value, "exemplary architecture", significant architect, and unique visual feature.  Once again, the report is great scholarship, including a biography of Goldberg, a history of hospital architecture and of the use of concrete in architecture, a detailed analysis of the building, its importance and its construction technique, and a fascinating account of Goldberg's pathbreaking use of computer-aided-design in creating the building.  It's a compelling, informative work, generously illustrated with photos and drawings, including those you see on this post.  Download the report here. 

from the Landmarks Commission report

Usually such a report is added to page of reports we've linked above.  As of this writing, the Prentice Report is not on that page.  It is available only at the end of the November agenda, which I have never seen done before.  It also concludes with a section stating the building 's concrete will - duh- probably require restoration work sometime in the future.  I don't recall ever seeing anything like this in a report before.  It's got the Department of Development's fingerprints all over it, and seems to be just another part of their script. 

from the Landmarks Commission report

In fact, the agenda and its attachments actually lay out the amazing farce that has been carefully scripted by the Emanuel administration.  The draft resolution decreeing Prentice's destruction already assumes that the Commission members will follow this script and vote in favor of landmark designation only minutes before . . . 

WHEREAS, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks (“Commission”) voted to approve a “preliminary landmark recommendation” for the (Former) Prentice Women’s Hospital Building (the “Building”) on November 1, 2012; and  . . .

It also assumes that the Commission will then accept a report by Housing and Economic Development Commissioner Andrew J.  Mooney  that looks like it was written by Northwestern, itself. Probably it was.  It regurgitates almost verbatim Northwestern's arguments that the adjacent two-block vacant lot is off-limits as an alternative, and that Northwestern's state-of-art medical lab can only be built if Goldberg's masterwork is destroyed.

Northwestern is about to surround that two-block vacant lot, which has already been gravel-surfaced and chain-linked for over three years, with a perimeter of flowers.  That is their highest use for the site at the present time, with a vague reference to new construction sometime in the next "several years."  You'd think that Northwestern, with some of the most brilliant minds in the world, could figure out how to make a plan that would integrate the new research lab into the construction on that two-block vacant lot, where it could link to the Lurie Center just across the street, just like a new facility built on the Prentice site.  But I suppose the Department of Development thought such a suggestion would be impolite.  Instead, they're recommending that Prentice be destroyed, to create still another vacant lot, so the two-block square vacant lot across the street won't feel so lonely.

The script's final lines for the members of Landmarks Commission?

Section 3.  The Commission hereby accepts and approves the Department of Housing and Economic Development report recommendation and rescinds its “preliminary landmark recommendation” for the Building.

From unprotected, to a landmark, to a corpse - all in about an hour.  The cynical audacity is breathtaking.  To general public, the Landmarks Commissioners are distinguished citizens, charged with protecting the precious architectural heritage that has made Chicago known throughout the world.  To Andrew Mooney, they're monkeys on a stick, expected to dance to the tune of the guy who brung 'em.

from the Landmarks Commission report

Emanuel Destroys Prentice

What we pretty much expected all along has now come to pass.   In an article/letter in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has signed the death knell for destroying Bertrand Goldberg's landmark quality Prentice Hospital.  Barring a last-minute action in the courts, which seems unlikely, the building is toast.

Chicago ain't ready for the rule of law yet.  The Chicago Landmarks Ordinance requires agendas to be posting 48 hours before each meeting.  While agendas are usually posted on the Commission's website a week in advance, the agenda for this Thursday's meeting, now less than 48 hours away, has not.

Chairman Rafael M. Leon promised earlier this fall that Prentice would be on the Landmarks agenda this fall.  He lied.  Even if it finds its way onto an agenda in November or December, it will, given the mayor's pronouncement, be meaningless.  Chairman Leon, please spare us the farce of Commission members - all but one of them non-architects - either falling over themselves to justify and praise Emanuel's decision to circumvent the legal process for determining whether a building qualifies for protection, or the equally repellent alternative of the commissioners voting to landmark, knowing full well it's doomed in the City Council Emanuel controls.

Update:  Prentice is on the agenda for this Thursday.  Usually, this would involve one of the Commission staff's excellent reports on the building being presented, and the agenda item would say something like "Resolution to recommend preliminary landmark designation for X and to initiate the consideration process for possible designation of the building as a Chicago landmark".  Here, there's no such reference.  The agenda item "Preliminary Landmark Recommendation" is followed immediately by the item "Report and Recommendations from the Department of Housing and Economic Development and Resolution Pertaining thereto."  I'm betting "thereto" will recommend Prentice's destruction.  Wouldn't want to have an actual debate on whether Prentice qualifies under the Landmarks Ordinance criteria, would we?

Same as it ever was, there are two set of rules in Chicago.

One is for the unconnected.  If the Landmarks Commission decides to designate your home as part of a new landmark district, it doesn't matter how much you don't like it, that's the way the law works.

The second is for connected mega-institutions like Northwestern, where you get to pick and choose the laws you follow.   Don't want Prentice to go through due process for landmark designation?  Just ask, and it will not only be yanked from the Landmarks agenda, but it will kept off - for over a year and a half, while mayoral spokespersons talk about mythical "ongoing talks" that manage never to involve anyone from the broad-based, grass-roots coalition - including many of Chicago's and the world's leading architects - making the case for saving Prentice.

It's kept off to give you time to hire the Chicago office, run by a former Emanuel operative, of a beltway lobbying firm best known for defending Big Pharma and Big Chemical from being accountable for their more toxic actions, and for receiving over $43 million to create the kind of right-wing attack ads that have been flooding our airwaves as never before during this election cycle.  And, for your benefit,  the city will continue to keep Prentice from the Landmarks Commission agenda so you can work with those lobbyists to spend millions of dollars creating a deceptive PR campaign based on misleading, one-sided half truths, astroturf support, and polls carefully engineered to arrive at a desired result.

And finally, to make absolutely sure you're happy, when the Mayor of Chicago announces his decision in your favor, he will do so by repeating all your canned talking points so perfectly, you'd swear he was working for your lobbyists, himself.


There's a story about Harry Cohen, studio boss of Columbia Pictures during the golden age of Hollywood, once saying,  "When I'm alone in a projection room, I have a foolproof device for judging whether a picture is good or bad. If my fanny squirms, it's bad. If my fanny doesn't squirm, it's good. It's as simple as that."  To which Herman Mankiewicz, the screenwriter who co-authored Citizen Kane with Orson Welles, replied.  "Image:  the whole world wired to Harry Cohn's ass!"

The loss of Prentice Hospital is tragic, but it's a reminder of how "The City that Works" works.  Chicago voters had their chance, when Richard M. Daley retired after a pair of increasingly destructive terms, to take an alternative path, but they chose, instead, to elect another emperor.  It's a hard habit to break.  And so, for the foreseeable future, for better or worse, the fate of all things Chicago are, ultimately, wired to Rahm's backside.  And in the case of Prentice, it just squirmed.

An open letter to Mayor Emanuel on Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital - a few truths versus one Big Lie

Dear Mr. Mayor:

I know it's probably down a bit on your crisis-du-jour list, but the issue of possible landmark designation for Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital appears to be coming to a head.  Word on the street is that the fix is in and Prentice is toast. 

This is no time for modesty.  The decision, ultimately, is entirely yours, and before your thumb proclaims final public judgement, I wanted to make one last pitch.

Some things about the debate are incontrovertible.  

• Northwestern University and Northwestern Hospital are both world-class institutions.
• Northwestern University wants to build an ambitious new Research Lab
• This project will employ thousands, and pump hundreds of millions of dollars into Chicago's economy
• The work done in this Research Lab has the potential of finding cures and treatments that will create better medical outcomes and save lives.

One key thing however, is quite controvertible: one astounding lie that Northwestern is working overtime  to couple with the truths listed above:

• There is a magic patch of land in Chicago.  It is magic because, although there are two vacant blocks directly across the street, and other opportunities across the large number of properties controlled by Northwestern, this patch of land is the only place in Streeterville, Chicago, or the universe on which Northwestern's Research Lab can be built.  It just so happens that this  patch of land is the site of Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital.  Northwestern would have us believe that if they are not allowed to circumvent legal process and destroy this landmark-quality structure, that new Research Lab, its thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in investment will vanish into thin air, never to be seen again.  And, if we are to believe Northwestern's more insidious intimations, many will die from cures never to be discovered.

The claims about this magic patch of land are so outrageously dishonest that any objective analysis would dismiss them without a second thought.  Except that Northwestern has committed millions to an increasingly desperate and meretricious campaign to influence public opinion and provide cover to its actions.  For this campaign, they have turned to a firm called Purple Strategies.

As someone who knows his way around Washington, Mr. Mayor, you know this kind of firm well -   beltway lobbyists that offer one-stop shopping.  They have Republicans.  They have Democrats.  They can argue one way, or they can argue other.  It just depends on who cuts the check.  Whatever you want to be true, no matter the reality, they will, for a price, create the appearance of it being true, through such tools of the trade as biased polls, astroturf support and misleading ads.   Key clients are Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Chemical.  According to The Nation, while Purple Strategies' staff may be cross-party, its activities are not.  Purple Strategies has received over $43 million to help Republican candidates foster the impression that Barack Obama is not the President who stopped America from falling into another Great Depression, who killed Bin Laden, and created the health care reform that had eluded all his predecessors, but a feckless, corrupt bumbler who hates America and wants to turn it into a socialist, Muslim state.  If you liked the kind of poison Joe Ricketts wants to bankroll, Mr. Mayor, you'll love what Purple Strategies has come up with for Northwestern.

Northwestern has come up with a handful of architects who support destroying Prentice. No need to demonize; they're good people.  But the Save Prentice Coalition  has come up with a coalition of many of the most distinguished architects, not just in Chicago, but throughout the world, all of whom are urging you to save Prentice.

And if you're tempted to dismiss their opinion because they've got no skin in the game, I would ask you to consider what these architects have created for Chicago . . .

Jeanne Gang:

Frank Gehry:

 

John Ronan:

Renzo Piano:

Krueck and Sexton:

Tod Williams and Billie Tsien:

.  .  . and compare it to what we've gotten from Northwestern:

 

 

From this physical evidence, I would leave it it to you, Mr. Mayor, as to whose judgement on matters of architectural quality are the more reliable.

I respect the judgement of people like Jeanne Gang and John Ronan, David Woodhouse and Jack Hartray, and their colleages, because, unlike Northwestern,  they have a proven track record of serving their clients while adding to the cultural capital of the city.  Northwestern knows only how to destroy and replace, with the kind of faceless mediocrity that sucks all the air out of the very idea of inviting, liveable urban space.

As someone who knows how the game is played, I'm sure you were amused by the press release where Northwestern promised they would do it right this time and hold an architectural competition  if they're allowed to destroy Prentice.  What - if they can't, they'll put up another piece of crap just for spite? And I'm sure you noticed that in the very next sentence, they took away what they had just given, proclaiming they wouldn't in any way be bound by the results of that competition.  But they promised to involve a Chicago architect no matter what.  Well, they've already had Chicago architects involved in most of their buildings, and the results are not reassuring.

I'm sure you've walked the streets of the Northwestern campus.  They're a depressing place, one anonymous building after another, often with dead-windowed walls facing the sidewalks.  It's a good thing most people being rushed to Northwestern are looking up at the ambulance ceiling, because the view of the unrelenting drabness out their window might convince them life wasn't really worth living, after all.

Along with the old Furniture Mart, Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital is the only architecturally distinctive marker in the Northwestern hospital district.   And those markers are essential. 

Marina City, the Wrigley Building, Sears (oops) Willis Tower, the Chicago Theater, Aqua, BP Bridge and Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, and many more like them.  These are the buildings that form the face of the Chicago - in newspapers, magazines, films, videos, books, on the internet, in vacation snapshots - all across the globe.  Out of necessity, there's seems always to be a new slogan for Chicago - "The City That Works", "Second to None".  They come and they go, but the images of Chicago make them almost superfluous.  The great buildings of Chicago are the pictures worth a thousand words.  They're the thing that builds and sustains the brand of Chicago throughout the world.  And Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital is a key component of that brand.


I understand politics.  (I once ran against Tony Laurino for alderman in the 39th, and I got more votes than any opponent he ever had.  [He still crushed me like a bug.  And then, to top if off, he mapped all the precincts I carried out of his ward.])  But it's wrong for Northwestern to hijack the legal process carefully put in place to consider landmark designations, simply because they are powerful and connected.  If I were Joe Schmo who wasn't happy about my house being in a proposed landmark district, I wouldn't be able to get the Landmarks Commission to yank consideration of that proposal from the Commission's agenda.  But that's exactly what Northwestern did, and they've kept it off, month after month for over a year and a half, to buy Northwestern more time to mount a P.R. offensive to counter the grass-roots campaign to save Prentice.

We are told this was to allow "talks" about Prentice to continue, but it's unclear how many and what kind of "talks" have actually taken place.  I know it's perceived to be the "Chicago Way", but frankly, it is disturbing that when you were quoted about ongoing talks on Prentice at a recent press conference, the only participants named were Northwestern and those already on record as opposing designation.  Bonnie McDonald of Landmarks Illinois has stated neither she or any other advocates have been invited to these closed-door meetings. 

You know the story of the Eiffel Tower.  How it was built as a temporary structure for the 1889 World Fair.   How a lot of the best people considered it a blot and an eyesore - just like Prentice - and relished the idea of it's being demolished at the end of its original 20-year permit.  It survived by the skin of its teeth, but could anyone today imagine Paris without it?  Paris is at the top of world-class cities because it doesn't trash its history.  When the Gare d'Orsay was no longer needed as a railroad depot, it wasn't wantonly destroyed. It was saved and renovated into one of the city's great museums, the Musee d'Orsay.

Prentice isn't quite as prominent as the Eiffel Tower, but the dynamic is the same, with the additional overlay of a great Chicago institution willing to blackmail an entire city to bend it to its will.  Allowing Northwestern to destroy Prentice is not good politics, and it's not good urban planning.

The explanations of why Prentice Hospital is a major work of architecture have been made many times, and very eloquently.  I'm sure you've read them, so I won't repeat them here.  Landmarks Illinois has already documented a number of ways Prentice could be effectively reused.  Drawing upon the expertise of Chicago's real estate community, a viable plan could easily be found. Northwestern is crammed to the gills with brilliant people, and it will have no problem finding an alternative path if Prentice gets the landmark designation it deserves.

The choice is between short-term expediency and long term vision.  Northwestern will always be able to take care of itself.  Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital, and Chicago's architectural legacy, which lack a $7 billion endowment, need a little help right now.  They need someone to run the kind of interference that keeps Chicago from becoming known as the city that lets its world-class riches slip through its fingers. 

Sincerely,

Lynn Becker

Prentice on Landmarks Agenda "sometime". So why am I depressed?

Both Deanna Issacs of the Chicago Reader and Ron Grossman of the Chicago Tribune report that at Thursday's meeting of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks, chairman Rafel Leon said Prentice will be on their agenda by the end of the year. 

This should be a major victory.  Why does it smell to me like a death knell?

Consider:
1.  Issacs uses the phrase, "will be on the commission's agenda"; Grossman "will address the issue". If "address the issue" is what Leon actually said, it leaves open the possibility of something short of normal consideration.
2. Leon's statement was a stratagem to preface his announcement that he would again forbid any discussion of Prentice at Thursday's meeting.
3. No date for discussion has been announced.  Why?  If you're going to do it, why play games about when?
4. Explaining why Prentice was yanked off the agenda in June of 2011, Leon said, according to Grossman, "Mayor (Rahm) Emanuel was in office less than two weeks"  This is contradicted by a June 2, 2011 report where the Trib's Blaim Kamin wrote  . . .

Jonathan Fine, executive director of Preservation Chicago, said he got a call from Chicago's landmarks chief, Brian Goeken, at 10 a.m. informing him of the news. Fine said Goeken told him that Northwestern University requested that old Prentice be taken off the agenda.

5.  Grossman quotes Leon again claiming that the Commission, Northwestern and preservationists have been working behind the scenes, but a Tuesday report by Grossman quoted Landmarks Illinois President Bonnie McDonald that there was only one such meeting, over a year ago, and that Northwestern continues to refuse to consider alternatives to demolition.
6.  Grossman also reports that the manager of Purple Strategies Chicago office, Chris Mather, is a former Rahm Emanuel press spokesperson.
7.  42nd Ward alderman Brendan Reilly again on Thursday declined to take a stand on Prentice.

Brendan Reilly has surprised me before, when in 2008 he announced a deal that sidetracked Northwestern University from its stated intention of demolishing Jarvis Hunt's Lake Shore Athletic Club for a Lucien Lagrange highrise.

I'd like to be surprised again, but what I'm seeing in all the points above is that the fix is in.  All those "behind the scenes" meetings which McDonald denies really took place probably did take place.  Preservationists were not invited, and the agenda was not how to save Prentice, but to how best spin its destruction.

When Rahm Emanuel rebuilt the Landmarks Commission with his own six appointees, none were architects.  The closest he got was the re-appointment of the extraordinarily talented landscape architect Ernest Wong. who, the last time the Commission was faced with a contentious issue - all the way back in 2008 - abstained from the vote that defeated a proposal to demolish the landmark Farwell Building, and then when the matter was brought up again two months later, was one of three commissioners to change their vote to "Yes" to sanction demolition.

Emanuel's other appointments were a former alderman, a former assessor, a professor of obstetrics and a restaurateur.

Right now, here's what I'm thinking.  The reason that Prentice has been kept off the Landmarks Commission agenda is because Emanuel didn't have the votes.  Using the Landmark's ordinance criteria for qualifying for landmark designation, Prentice is close to a slam dunk, and with the grassroots effort to save Prentice in full flower, commissioners would have a hard time to vote, in good conscience, against preserving it.

I'm thinking that in those fifteen months of delay, the city has been working with Northwestern to provide cover for Prentice's destruction. 

I would not like to be a member of the landmarks commission right now.  My bet is that the screws are being put to those people big time.  The massive PR campaign being mounted by Northwestern (in Grossman's report, a "city hall source" makes a point of declaring they've gotten 1,200 emails and letters from that campaign) is diverting attention from what should be the legal focus (does or does not Prentice Hospital qualify for landmark protection) to absurd but time-tested apple-pie contentions that if Prentice isn't destroyed, jobs will vanish, Northwestern's new research center will evaporate, and thousands will die from cures never found.

And when - and only when - they know they have enough commissioners in their pocket, the city will put Prentice on the Landmarks agenda, and Leon will preside over a meeting in which landmark designation is defeated.  The Commission on Chicago Landmarks will again prove itself an empty shell, and reveal that it's purpose is not to save landmarks, but to provide cover for their destruction.

I want badly to be proven wrong. 

Astroturf and shady polls - the latest in Northwestern's battle to destroy Prentice

click images for larger view

It may get an "F" for truthfulness, but Northwestern University certainly gets an "A" for industriousness in its increasingly mendacious PR campaign to keep Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital off the agenda of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks.

On Thursday, Northwestern issued a press release, Poll Shows Overwhelming Support for Northwestern's Plans to Build New Research Center, with 72% of the 507 respondents saying "a new medical research center on the site of the old Prentice Women's Hospital in Chicago".

Except, of course, that the poll was anything but unbiased.  The press release says respondants were polled "after hearing arguments from both sides."  From whom?  Northwestern?  The words "Bertrand Goldberg", "potential landmark", "Frank Gehry", "Jeanne Gang" (or the names of any of the other 60+ world class architects who have spoken out on the need to save Prentice) appear nowhere in the press release, so forgive me for suspecting that "argument from both sides" is anything other than a sham.

But wasn't this an independent poll?

Ah, no.  It was commissioned by an entity called Purple Strategies.  Who is Purple Strategies?

Purple Strategies is a PR/lobbying firm.  The "People" page on their website is full of Beltway political operatives, but, tellingly, a client list seems nowhere to be found.  Could Northwestern be the first entity willing to publish the fact that they're using them?

Let their website tell the story:

Our approach is to personalize the issue. When constituents feel connected to a movement, they will energize around an issue. But this doesn’t happen overnight. We work with our clients to create the right grassroots infrastructure before a fight arises.

Sounds pretty much like astroturf, the practice of fabricating grass roots support, doesn't it?

And the polling?  This is from the bio of Doug Usher, Managing Partner, Purple Insights . . .

At Purple, Usher has developed custom research methodologies that provide complete integration between opinion research and successful communications execution.

Complete integration?  As in, designing the research to insure a predetermined result?

Of course, I could be wrong.  If Purple Insights releases the methodology and its question list, I'll be glad to post it here in full, and if it shows that the questions were, in fact, not a stacked deck, (plus or minus 4.4 percent), I'll be happy to apologize.

Until then, this looks like just another phony brick in Northwestern's increasingly massive wall of deception.

The "coalition" of architects supporting destroying Prentice lists only three names:  Jeff Case, Principal, Holabird & Root (H&R's website lists four principals and three associates - was Case the only one they could get?), plus Dan Mitchell and Todd Halamaka of HOK.  Fine people, all, but a rather poor counterpoint to Jeanne Gang, John Ronan, William Baker, Frank Gehry, Doug Farr, Ron Krueck, Brad Lynch, Joe Valerio, Dan Wheeler, Ross Wimer, David Woodhouse, Mark Sexton, Donna Robertson, Robert Somol, Bjarke Ingels, and many more at the same level of accomplishment, who oppose the demolition.  (Strangely enough, Crain's reported earlier that Jim Goettsch had also signed on to the anti-Prentice efforts.  He's a true heavyweight, and it's a mystery why Northwestern didn't use his name in the press release.)

The rest is a "good old boys" coalition of Chicago's power insiders, operating behind closed doors, free from public scrutiny, united in subverting due process - fifteen months and counting -  to keep the discussion of whether or not Prentice deserves landmark protection out of the one forum where it legally belongs:  The Commission on Chicago Landmarks.

Northwestern, Grow Up: Refuting Northwestern's desperate PR campaign to Destroy Prentice.

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Northwestern - the hospital and university - is getting desperate. Faced with growing international opposition from architects, historians and activists to Northwestern's plan to demolish Bertrand Goldberg's iconic Prentice Hospital building, they're mounting a full-press PR effort whose basic tenets are so transparently absurd that they stand only to make Northwestern look brazenly cynical and ridiculous at the same time.

And so we have the op-ed in Crain's Chicago Business by Dean of the Feinberg School of Medicine Eric Neilson in which he contends with what looks to be a straight face that thousands of jobs, hundreds of millions of dollars - no make it $1.5 billion - will all vanish into thin air, and, apparently, thousands will die, if Northwestern isn't allowed to destroy Prentice.    It's like tax cuts for rich in Republican politics.  Demolishing Prentice has become the answer to every problem, the fulcrum on which the entire future of the Northwestern campus rests in the balance between a glorious future and complete disintegration.

This isn't an argument; it's a tantrum.  It's pretty much on the level of threatening to hold your breath until you die unless you get more bubble gum -and then won't you all be sorry.

And then, of course, there's the Chicago Tribune.  On August 12th, with its Pulitzer Prize winning architecture critic Blair Kamin safely packed away to a Nieman fellowing at Harvard, the Trib ran an editorial under the typically pompous headline, Let Northwestern build, shilling for the destruction of the building Kamin has called a "boldly sculptural, brilliantly engineered high-rise"

Chicago Tribune urban planning at work
Hedrich Blessing photography, courtesy the Chuckman Collection

It was full of the usual half-truths and evasions, which is what you expect from those wonderful people who gave you McCormick Place on what should of remained open lakefront.  It was the Tribune we have to thank for what was essentially a vanity project of the paper's isolationist, red-baiting, labor-hating editor Robert R. McCormick, who dispatched political reporter George Tagge to Springfield to lobby legislators to rubber-stamp the project.  Although the original eyesore mercifully burned down in the 1960's, it's much better successor by Gene Summers still crowds what today would have been open lakefront, for all the people.

Thanks, Chicago Tribune.  Please don't hold it against us if we don't have much use for your new "gift" of destroying Prentice.

Northwestern would like you to not notice the letter to Mayor Emanuel supporting saving Prentice from 60 major architects from all across the world.  Frank Gehry?  Jeanne Gang? Who are they?  What trees to they plant?  What bankers do they have on retainer?

Enter Paul Beitler.  He isn't some building-hugging goo-goo, but one of Chicago's successful developers.  In a conversation with Crain Chicago's's Business Shia Kapos, he says, in Kapos' words, that "he's had enough of the 'out with the old' mentality."  Beitler calls Northwestern's bluff. "There are a lot of things in nature that don't fit, but we find ways to work around them and with them.  This building is so unusual that regardless of the its designer it deserves to stand the test of time. If allowed to remain it will be the only building that stands out from the blocks of architectural mediocrity . . . "  You can't kid a kidder, and Beitler isn't buying Northwestern's protests that they have alternative to destroying Prentice.  He's been in the business and done enough deals to know that's pure B.S.

Today, the Save Prentice Coalition issued an eloquent refutation of Northwestern's arguments.  Read the full text after the break.

Speaking from someone who saw its excellence first-hand when I was in the emergency room a couple weeks ago, Northwestern Hospital is one of Chicago's great institutions.  Why is it dealing with the issue of Prentice like the really bad doctor who patronizes his patients with baby talk?

Northwestern, grow up.  

Stop insulting our intelligence with your puerile arguments and false alternatives.   Prentice doesn't work for you?  Fine.  There are a lot of developers for whom it would work out just fine.  There are other places to build your state-of-the-art laboratory.  You already have a lot bridges.  Make more, longer if you have to.  As Paul Beitler says, Prentice is the only distinctive building in a sea of architectural mediocrity that demeans your brand.  Don't destroy it.  Use it in building that brand.  There are a lot of people who want to help.  Let them.

Don't be deluded in thinking that once you destroy Prentice, it will be forgotten.  As the legacy of Bertrand Goldberg's work grows in time - and it will - Northwestern, whatever else its achievements, will be forever known that as the vandal that destroyed a key piece of Chicago's cultural legacy.

You're better than that.  You're all about healing, and healing is about a lot more than what goes on in surgery.  Your campus is a forbidding, unwelcoming physical presence.   It misrepresents you as a mere repository of great corporate power.

Make your campus human scaled. Heal it, as you continue to build.  Start by agreeing to find an alternative that saves Prentice, perhaps the only place on campus where the soaring grace truly expresses the aspirations of your mission.   With just a portion of the same brilliant thinking you bring to the practice and teaching of medicine, you can find a solution to saving Prentice that will let you do everything you want, while making you a true hero in the definition of Chicago's character, past, present and future.


Read the Save Prentice press release after the break.



TO: Chicago Reporters
FROM: Save Prentice Coalition
RE: Northwestern’s New Public Relations Campaign

This week, Northwestern University started making some big promises to Chicago. On
Monday, August 13 in response to pressure from the preservation community, they
launched the “Finding Tomorrow’s Cures” campaign to convince Chicagoans that jobs,
investment, and cures for diseases are on the horizon but can only be realized by
building on the site of the historic Prentice Women’s Hospital at 333 E. Superior Street
in Streeterville.

Here are three things to know about their new campaign:

Northwestern Is Offering A False Choice

• Northwestern wants us to believe that Chicago needs to choose between
saving lives and saving Prentice, but it is a false choice. We can and
should do both.

• None of the benefits Northwestern promises are tied to placing their new
research facility on the site of the historic Prentice Women’s Hospital.
• In fact, the intimately intertwined partners of the McGraw Medical Center

consortium – including Northwestern University and Northwestern
Memorial Hospital – could designate an alternate site to build a medical
research facility and invest in the reuse of Prentice for other institutional or
commercial needs. This would deliver all of the same benefits
Northwestern promises – and create even more jobs and economic activity.

Northwestern Still Doesn’t Have A Plan for the Prentice Site

• Northwestern wants us to believe that there is an urgent need to demolish
historic Prentice Women’s Hospital, but construction isn’t scheduled to
start until 2015. This provides more than two years to find a solution that
builds for our future while preserving our past.

• The only specific fact Northwestern provides about the initial construction
is that it will be “300,000 to 500,000 square feet.” There are no land-use
plans, renderings, massing studies, environmental impact analyses, traffic
and parking studies, financing plans, etc.

 Northwestern Isn’t Living Up To The Standards It Sets For Others 

• As part of their campaign, Northwestern is calling on the city to
demonstrate leadership and a commitment to innovation. Meanwhile, their
campaign is designed to convince Chicagoans that finding a reuse for
historic Prentice and an alternate site for research is simply not feasible.

 • However, just across the street sits a massive vacant lot owned by
Northwestern University’s long-term strategic partner Northwestern
Memorial HealthCare. These two institutions have a long history of
cooperating on development in Streeterville, millions of dollars in shared
real estate and facility leases, and a joint strategic plan that includes
investment in facilities and infrastructure among its objectives.

 • Northwestern has more than enough resources to find a solution. What
they are lacking is will and creativity. As Northwestern University
spokesperson Al Cubbage recently stated when asked how they would
fund a new building, "We have the money. There's no question about that.
Northwestern University has an endowment of $7 billion. That's billion with
a b."