Team Culture hopes to revitalize downtown using the arts — perhaps by having concerts on a floating barge atop the Chicago River.
Rendering courtesy of Lou Raizin
About two decades after Millennium Park opened, it’s time for downtown’s “next big thing,” says an organization of civic, business and networking leaders.
The organization, which calls itself “Team Culture,” wants to reinvent vital parts of the city center by filling empty, dark spaces with light and art.
“There have been two things in recent history that changed downtown. One was the Theatre District and the other was Millennium Park. It’s time for culture to do it all over again,” Lou Raizin, president and CEO of Broadway in Chicago, told a lunchtime gathering Tuesday at the City Club of Chicago at Maggiano’s Banquets downtown.
He spoke to the prospect of “enormous economic opportunity,” noting that New York’s night-time economy generates about $35 billion a year and supports about 300,000 jobs.
Raizin and his supporters envision expanding the use of the city’s existing spaces, such as having a barge, on the Chicago River, converted into a concert hall, or one containing a farmers’ market. (Music of the Baroque presented a full concert last summer from a boat moving down the river).
In this rendering, a floating farmer’s market would make stops along the Chicago River on different days of the week, according to the newly formed Team Culture.
Courtesy of Lou Raizin
And they believe they find art in unexpected places, like certain alleys in Chicago. A similar task in Detroit has created one of the “must-see” cultural things for Motor City visitors, Raizin said.
What if Lower Wacker Drive could be redeveloped into a venue for an “urban festival”? Or what if art illuminated the dark underground hallways of the Chicago Pedway?
“What if at 8 o’clock at night you went to dinner, went to an exhibition, and a segment of the pedestrian walkway was remodeled into a virtual [light] experience? » said Raizín.
What State Street would look like with new art installations, according to Team Culture.
Courtesy of Lou Raizin
On Tuesday, there were more questions than answers about Raizin and his potential collaborators about where the cash would come from to fund the projects.
“We are talking to a number of people,” Raizin said after the presentation, declining to mention names. “We are very close.”
“It’s as much about letting the government get out of the way and the constraints as it is about what we’re asking the government to do for us,” said Civic Federation President Joe Ferguson, who is a member of Team Culture.
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