Chicago struck gold when it planted a huge park in the heart of the city. Could the jazz plaza do the same for New Orleans ?

Sunday, July 30, 2006

By Michelle Krupa

CHICAGO -- As midday traffic rushed along Michigan Avenue on a hot day last month, a gaggle of children stood in a shallow reflecting pool waiting for a cooling geyser of water to erupt from the mouth of a smiling stranger projected on a 50-foot wall looming over their heads.

"Have you seen it spit?" asked Donna Lee, a registered nurse, as she stood near the edge of the animated fountain, one of the most popular features of Millennium Park, a 24½-acre space in the heart of Chicago's downtown Loop.

Since opening two years ago, the park has become an instant Chicago landmark. It has drawn international attention for its acclaimed art pieces, the $205 million in philanthropic donations that bolstered its development and the residential real estate explosion it has sparked, essentially remaking a part of the city that used to go dark when commuters headed home.

Could the same thing happen in New Orleans ? The prospect has captivated a cadre of political and corporate power brokers, who see the Chicago park's six-year evolution from an unsightly railroad yard to world renown as a model for renewing an area of New Orleans that includes City Hall and the Louisiana Superdome.

Their $716 million proposal, dubbed the Hyatt Jazz District, calls for the drastic overhaul of a 20-acre swath around Duncan Plaza . The crowning glory would be a jazz performance center at the eastern end of an unobstructed plaza stretching roughly from the junction of Loyola and Tulane avenues to the Superdome.

The jazz district would dramatically alter the sagging area near the stadium, which is itself in the throes of a $185 million package of repairs and improvements to be completed by September. City Hall and two state office buildings would be knocked down and relocated. A new civil courthouse and an underground parking garage would be built, and city government would move to the salmon-colored Dominion Tower , now home to the mostly vacant New Orleans Shopping Centre. The park's western anchor would be a remade Hyatt Regency New Orleans, the 1,184-room hotel at Poydras Street and Loyola Avenue that was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and remains shuttered.

Spearheading the jazz plaza plan is Laurence Geller, the president Chicago's Strategic Hotels & Resorts, which owns the Hyatt and promises to pour $303 million into modernizing it. Geller, who lives in Chicago , has recommended that New Orleans model its jazz plaza on Millennium Park , which, not incidentally, sits just blocks from Strategic's high-rise Fairmont Chicago hotel.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin also is on board after visiting the Chicago park during last year's meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. He smiles at the thought of the enormous "spitting" photographs of Spanish artist Jaume Plensa's Crown Fountain -- they have been likened to 21st-century gargoyles -- and wonders whether a similar attraction -- perhaps minus the spitting -- could serve as a New Orleans memorial to those who died in Katrina.

New Orleans developers also are intrigued by the way Millennium Park revitalized real estate in a previously moribund part of Chicago .

'A messy process'

But making the vision a reality will take more than enthusiastic comparisons to the Chicago park, more even than the millions in corporate money that Geller has committed to the project. And indeed, as Chicago leaders learned, projects on such a grand scale are certain to kick up equally grand controversies amid mounting costs and missed deadlines.

Observers say Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, one of the nation's most powerful and aggressive city leaders, had to drive Millennium Park through to completion -- and his city was not devastated by a massive flood. They wonder whether Nagin, who was criticized for a lack of follow-through during his first term and during Katrina's aftermath, can steer the project through the inevitable financial and political challenges.

"It's a messy process, and that's in a community that's not having the life-and-death issues that New Orleans has," said Millennium Park Executive Director Helen Doria. Moreover, she cautions, while developers might see a renaissance on the edges of a jazz plaza in downtown New Orleans , "it's not a magic bullet."

But Nagin, while saying he recognizes the city must tend to major priorities such as repairing its shattered water system, said he doesn't see the proposed jazz park as a choice between grand visions and basic services. New Orleans , he said, should do both.

"We have to think about the future, and I see a city that's totally different than what we have today, a city that's as big, if not larger, than what we had pre-Katrina," the mayor said. "So if we don't start to plan right now on these types of projects, we're going to go back to what we had pre-Katrina."

Indeed, the jazz plaza project could go a long way toward showing the world that New Orleans is committed to becoming a world-class city after Katrina, said Chicago real estate executive Penny Pritzker, whose family founded the Hyatt hotel chain.

"Don't underestimate how important it is for New Orleans to re-establish itself as a destination," said Pritzker, whose family gave $15 million toward the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, a sculpture that serves as Millennium Park 's band shell. "I think it's also a very physical manifestation of: 'We believe in this city. We're not only about recovery; we're here to stay.' "

Vision takes root

Millennium Park is not a playground, at least not in the traditional sense. It has no ball fields, no swimming pool, no equipment for children to climb. Ball games are prohibited, as are inline skating, blaring radios and dogs.

But the sprawling urban park pulses with energy. Events on the Great Lawn range from concerts by cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to "hot Latin mix" dance lessons. Children and adults alike giggle at their warped reflections in British artist Anish Kapoor's 110-ton sculpture, which locals have dubbed "The Bean." And business people kick off their shoes to dip their toes in the Lurie Garden 's pond.

When Daley announced in 1998 that the city would create a park at no cost to taxpayers to mark the year 2000, it was a step toward fulfilling a decades-old dream of turning the Illinois Central tract, a dusty train yard and parking lot below street level, into a rooftop garden. The park would be built flush with adjacent roads as the highest deck of a multilevel underground structure containing a garage and subterranean commuter train station.

The mayor originally said the park would be finished in two years at a cost of $150 million: $120 million in bonds financed by revenue from the parking garage and $30 million in private donations.

But the blueprint itself quickly became Millennium Park 's first hurdle, said Ed Uhlir, a city consultant who oversaw the park's development and now is its director of architecture, landscape and design. The initial sketch, a stolid neoclassical exercise by Chicago architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, was derided as too conservative.

The artistic judgment, Uhlir said, had a practical implication: Wealthy donors who were expected to underwrite a fifth of the park's cost didn't want to support it.

"People like Cindy Pritzker (Penny Pritzker's niece) said, 'I'm just not going to do that. It's just too retrograde,' " he said. Instead Uhlir took charge of overall design and subcontracted individual components of the park to an eclectic group of more inventive architects.

Following their lead

Nagin said last week that New Orleans is moving to undertake a similar strategy. Geller has enlisted Thom Mayne, winner of the 2005 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the profession's highest honor, to design the park. The mayor said that in the next few weeks, he and Geller will name a project manager to keep track of financing and timelines for each segment of the project, private and public.

"Once they break ground . . . they're looking at an 18-month construction schedule, so we want to make sure it stays on track," the mayor said.

Nagin also said that since unveiling the jazz district plan in May, he and Geller have lobbied Congress and the White House to extend to 2009 the deadline for developers to qualify for federal tax incentives through the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act, which aims to help communities devastated by last year's hurricanes.

Those tax breaks, along with expectations that FEMA will pick up part of the project's $103 million public tab in demolishing public structures ruined by the flood, would go a long way toward bringing the project to fruition, Nagin said.

New Orleans , too, is looking to private philanthropists to help with specific elements of the jazz plaza, but just how much will be sought in donations is uncertain. The overall price tag for the park's infrastructure, including the jazz center, an outdoor amphitheater and indoor performance space, is pegged at more than $200 million.

To attract support on that scale, Uhlir said, the look of the jazz plaza must be ground-breaking. But another lesson from Chicago is to be careful what you wish for.

Add-ons and overruns

Philanthropists became mobilized by the Chicago park's more sophisticated design possibilities. And their desire to participate led to offers to underwrite some massive pieces of art and architecture, structures so heavy that they forced changes to the park's foundation, including some that had to be made after significant work already was complete, Uhlir said.

As a result, the price tag for construction skyrocketed and the completion date was delayed repeatedly, drawing fire from watchdog groups and ordinary citizens alike.

"Construction began almost immediately (to meet the 2000 deadline) without a plan for what would go on the surface deck, and that resulted in significant service overruns," said Laurence Msall, president of The Civic Federation, a 112-year-old taxpayer advocacy group that kept a close eye on Millennium Park 's development.

"Activity is not necessarily an accomplishment when you're taking about a construction plan that lacks adequate detail and engineering," he said.

More controversy erupted in 2001 when a Chicago Tribune report exposed the role of a politically connected company in several angles of the project and highlighted possible impropriety in the awarding of a contract to build the parking garage.

City officials and the firms involved denied wrongdoing or would not comment at the time, according to the report.

Uhlir defended the runaway costs and lengthening timetable as a happy outgrowth of Millennium Park 's ability to capture public interest. As major gifts forced changes in its blueprint, the park's escalating grandeur inspired more donors to get involved.

"They're not cost overruns," Uhlir said of line-item increases that tripled the park's budget to $480 million. "They're scope changes that expanded the project.

"Ideally, you would have had the whole thing designed and then build it," he said. "But then you wouldn't have multiple designers, which is why I think the park is successful."

Kevin Poorman, general counsel of the Chicago-based Pritzker Realty Group, took some convincing.

"I was one of the skeptics about Millennium Park ," said Poorman, a New Orleans native who lives in a northern suburb of Chicago . Soaring costs and alleged cronyism had turned Millennium Park into a punchline on the local coffee-klatch circuit. Of greatest concern to Poorman: "There was no real budget that anyone could really put their arms around."

New Orleans ' jazz plaza concept is already generating static of that sort. Critics point out that it's the latest in a long line of plans for jazz museums and outdoor performance sites that were announced amid fanfare only to be stillborn, a point even Nagin conceded.

"You know, we as New Orleanians tend to not do big projects well," he said. "But I think we have enough political will, enough community will and an incredible corporate sponsor in the Hyatt, and I think we can push this thing through."

Poorman was quick to point out that similar criticism once was heaped on a prominent New Orleans project that, as it turned out, has generated millions of dollars and become a landmark in its own right.

"When the Superdome was built," he said, "it was a laughingstock."

Injecting life into area

Among the parties that had much to gamble on the fate of Millennium Park were real estate developers who as recently as five years ago struggled to lease relatively cheap office space on the eastern edge of the square-mile Loop, which draws an estimated 600,000 commuters every day.

At least 10 blocks from a major commuter train station, the area was dingy and drab, with vagrants passing their days near the Illinois Central tracks and petty crime not infrequent, said Ty Tabing, executive director of the Chicago Loop Alliance, which represents more than 160 of the area's businesses.

The area around New Orleans ' City Hall has suffered some of the same eclipse since Hyatt took its stand on what turned out to be the wrong end of Poydras Street as more dynamic development -- the casino and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center -- focused on the riverfront.

But a year after Millennium Park opened in 2004, it had transformed the area, and a study completed for the city of Chicago 's Planning and Development Department estimated its impending impact on residential development in the immediate vicinity at $1.4 billion.

The report, by Goodman Williams Group and URS Corp., predicted that 2,500 new residential units with an average price of $400 per square foot would spring up near the park by 2014. That square-footage value, the consultants found, had jumped by $100 because of Millennium Park .

In unveiling the Hyatt Jazz District project, Geller, Nagin and others suggested that recasting the Central Business District with a central green space surrounded by music venues and public buildings could have a similar effect, though perhaps with more moderate prices.

But Tabing stressed that it was not Millennium Park alone, nor market forces unaided by government directives, that turned the area's vacant commercial space into some of the hottest and most expensive residential real estate in Chicago .

City leaders pushed several initiatives to improve the East Loop and used eminent domain powers to seize buildings with outdated facilities or high vacancy rates, Tabing said. They also offered financial incentives to rejuvenate the nearby theater district, which also had been in decline.

"The plan for this area of the city was not predicated on Millennium Park ; it was predicated on mixed uses," Tabing said. "I don't think (the park), in itself, is enough."

Condos sprouting up

Developer Louis D'Angelo is spending $175 million to make residential condos out of second-tier office space in The Metropolitan Tower, across the street from the park.

Wearing a hard-hat and standing on the roof of the building, known for the blue light that rises into the night sky from its rooftop pyramid, D'Angelo said he knew Millennium Park would draw investors. Indeed, around the time of Millennium Park 's official unveiling in 2004, potential buyers lined up in front of The Metropolitan Tower at 5 a.m., four hours before the condos went on sale, D'Angelo said.

"Every time that we read in the papers that the city was behind six months, we would push back our opening six months," he said.

Aside from D'Angelo's project, three condo towers, each more than 80 stories tall, are under construction near Millennium Park , Tabing said, and their units aren't cheap.

"People are paying price points that have never been seen before," he said.

Residential development also has spurred a level of retail investment unprecedented in the East Loop , Tabing said.

New Orleans developers have pledged to include retailers, such as clothing stores and a movie theater, in their jazz district plans. But D'Angelo suggested that such plans cannot be rigid.

"It's a synergistic relationship," he said, pointing to boutiques, sandwich shops, jewelers and wine bars that have sprung up in the past two years across the street from the park. "The more retail, the more residents; the more residents, the more retail. It's really self-sustaining."

Though he would not comment specifically on the potential impact of a major park project in New Orleans , D'Angelo noted that Millennium Park 's success cannot be extracted from Chicago 's prosperity.

" Millennium Park was not built in the desert," he said. " Millennium Park is not in a vacuum. Millennium Park was done in the bosom of Chicago ."

Growing pains

But Millennium Park did not evolve without inflicting a few wounds.

Advocates for the Chicago Park District, which is not affiliated with Millennium Park , argued that as the city pumped cash into the project, park district facilities and programs were waning.

"As the cash mounted, people said, 'We have needs in our neighborhoods,' " said Blair Kamin, the Chicago Tribune's architecture critic, who has covered Millennium Park extensively and has visited New Orleans several times since Katrina to write about recovery planning.

Doria warned that especially in New Orleans , where water pressure can plummet at any moment and electricity can be unreliable, residents easily could take aim at the Hyatt Jazz District proposal.

"It will become a target. People will say, 'I don't have clean water, I don't have a hospital,' " she said. "It'll end up being a target if everything else isn't being worked on."

Nagin admitted that New Orleans has problems well beyond the typical challenges of an American city. "We're a city in recovery, and I think people need to get real about that," he said. "There's no magic wand to wave to fix everything. Everything's incremental, and it's going to take some time."

That said, the mayor quickly added: "I feel pretty good about this project."

Doria also cautioned that any new public space should not be designed for out-of-town visitors but to fulfill the needs of local residents. "You don't do things for tourists," she said. "You do things for people who live there, and the tourists will follow."

Kamin noted that any park of the size and scope of Millennium Park is likely to take several years to construct. Thus, the opening of a jazz park in New Orleans could coincide with the city's across-the-board recovery.

But he warned that Millennium Park never would have flourished in Chicago if the East Loop, and the city as a whole, had not promoted progress simultaneously in other areas.

"You can see where it would help to send a signal to major investors that the city's not going to roll up and die," Kamin said of New Orleans ' jazz plaza idea. "But it seems that unless the basic needs are met, it's like, 'Let them eat cake.'

"This is icing," he said. "You have to worry about the cake first."

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Michelle Krupa can be reached at mkrupa@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3312.