[OhioGuy]

Union Station plans fail to live up to lofty rhetoric

By Blair Kamin Contact Reporter
Chicago Tribune
May 25, 2017, 8:03 PM

Almost apologetically, backers of the just-announced plans for redeveloping Chicago's Union Station are characterizing their proposals as preliminary and conceptual. Apologies are indeed in order. The drawings fail to live up to the lofty rhetoric that Amtrak executives and Mayor Rahm Emanuel mouthed Thursday about turning the historic station and its surroundings into a vibrant urban center, complete with "new and dynamic" additions to Chicago's skyline.

The problem is not a lack of architectural refinement. It's a lack of strong concepts. There's no bold idea to signal Union Station's transformation from a workaday rail hub to a festive gathering place.

A planned food hall with the station is dull with a capital "D." The high-rises as presented are mere placeholders. Raised plazas and terraces — the obligatory package of public green space, supposedly easily accessible — are unlikely to lure people from the sidewalks.

To be sure, there are promising kernels in the designs prepared by Chicago's Goettsch Partners for Riverside Investment & Development, the hometown developer Amtrak chose to carry out this $1 billion-plus project. But what we are seeing suggests that the financially struggling railroad, which has tried before to redevelop Union Station, put a premium on getting things done rather than getting them done right.