CREW Gets Park Gossip

We were on hand for a tour ofMillennium Park (this pic is in Anish Kapoor's reflective Cloud Gate), as CREW Chicago gota history lesson and some gossip from Ed Uhlir-- creator of the park's master plan and director of its design and construction. As Ed tells it, Mayor Daley's dentist was located near the site back in the day, and the mayor got sick of looking at parked cars and railroad tracks while getting his teeth cleaned. (How often did he get his teeth cleaned?) Fast forward though lawsuits, ballooning budgets (predicted cost: $125M, actual cost: $490M), and some Perez Hilton-worthy intrigue and backstabbing (we promised not to kiss and tell), and you have today's park, which hosts five million visitors per year and contributes $1.2B in tourism dollars to the city.

Jennifer Davit, Lurie Garden's head horticulturist, tells us the garden was Piet Ouldof's first assignment in the US. (His garden designs are now famous; he conceived the High Line in NYC.) The garden is chemical free and sustainability focused on only plants that can thrive in Chicago's wonky temperatures (that's a scientific gardening term). Ever hear of plant sabotage? Another designer, who shall remain nameless, was not a fan of Frank Gehry's Pritzker Pavilion. She decided on huge hedges to separate the garden and block the view of the shiny behemoth. (Frank, who is a proud Luddite, sent a carrier pigeon with a note of protest.)

Tom Jacobs gave us the deets on how his team at Krueck + Sexton Architects put together Catalan artist Jaume Plensa's Crown Fountain (those faces that spit water on the unsuspecting). Here he's showing us the clear glass blocks that make up each structure. Apparently, it takes a worker five years of scooping molten glass (ouch) before he/she can be promoted to the foreman, who cuts the glass with an expert eye. LED manufacturers engaged in a shoot-out in early stages, creating full-scale mockups for the firm so they could hose them down and see how they held up under pressure (water pressure, that is).

We had to include a sneak peak of the park's upcoming Jun Kaneko art exhibit. These sculptures are a play on the Tanuki figure, a trickster in Japanese lore who loves creating mayhem. We think they're pretty cute, but be careful--one might be stealing your wallet.