The Gateway

Despite the dreary weather, two of the Chicago Loop Alliance’s new placemaking initiatives, the activation of Pritzker Park, located at Jackson and Van Buren, and the #CitySeats pop-up seating program, started off with a bang today. A lunchtime celebration of the park’s new café tables drew scores of people, who enjoyed free coffee, savory pies from Bridgeport Pasty’s mini electric food truck, and the sounds of March Forth, a raucous circus-punk marching band featuring dancing stilt walkers.

[This piece also ran in Checkerboard City, John Greenfield's column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets on Wednesday evenings.]

The Gateway, Chicago's first "People Plaza" seating area, recently opened at what Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein described as an "under-acknowledged public space" in the median of State Street between Wacker Drive and Lake Street. The installation is funded by the Chicago Loop Alliance, one of the downtown chambers of commerce, via a Special Service Area, and it was implemented as part of the Chicago Department of Transportation's Make Way for People public space initiative. Red and blue metal tables and chairs, several of them shaded by umbrellas, as well as several new flower boxes, dot the former concrete no-man's land. A couple weeks ago, at around 2 p.m., a handful of people were enjoying the space, including a group of women engrossed in conversation despite the traffic on either side of them.