Cleaning Up Chicago

In the great Chicago fire of 1871, some 18,000 buildings and houses were destroyed, forcing Chicagoans to rebuild their city on new, more modern lines. Since then the "new" buildings have deteriorated, and large areas surrounding the downtown Loop district have long since turned into slums. Last week a group of Chicago business men announced a bold plan to cure this costly civic sore. The plan: spend $400 million in the next seven years to demolish the cheap hotels, rooming houses and honky-tonks that greet visitors approaching Chicago's thriving Loop, replace them with a cluster of new buildings and parks.

Detailed plans for the 151 acres call for buildings to house city, state and Federal Government agencies now spread around the city; a 20,000-student branch of the University of Illinois; 5,000 apartments, a 6,000-auto parking area and a $15 million central-heating plant. Marked for destruction are such grey granite landmarks as pigeon-splattered city hall and the federal courthouse, to be replaced by small parks. Of 513 buildings in the main project area north of the winding Chicago River, only ten, including the huge Merchandise Mart and the American Medical Association headquarters, are classified as in "good" condition.

The Fort Dearborn plan (named after the early American fort on the city's site) was largely the work of Architect Nathaniel A. Owings, of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and Realtor Arthur Rubloff, developer of the sprawling Evergreen Park shopping center on Chicago's southwest side and the postwar "magnificent mile" on the city's famed Michigan Avenue.

Their aim is to give Chicago something bigger and better than New York's 12-acre Rockefeller Center (cost: $125 million) and Pittsburgh's 59-acre Golden Triangle (upwards of $50 million). Said Owings : "Esthetically, it is as exciting as Venice. We can give to this city of ours something that people travel to Europe to see. This is not a pie-in-the-sky proposal."

Over the years many similar though smaller plans for Chicago have died through lack of interest. What inspires Chicagoans about the Rubloff-Owings concept is the fact that influential businessmen are behind the project. Among them: Hughston M. McBain, chairman of Marshall Field & Co., Willis D. Gale, chairman of Commonwealth Edison, and Arthur T. Leonard, president, Chicago Association of Commerce and Industry. The sponsors feel that financing will not be a major problem. One suggested plan: establishment of a nonprofit corporate body eligible for city, state and federal land-clearance grants, plus "interested" Eastern insurance money.

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