Mc Cormick Tribune Plaza & Ice Rink - History

History

Lying between Lake Michigan to the east and the Loop to the west, Grant Park has been Chicago's front yard since the mid-19th century. Its northwest corner, north of Monroe Street and the Art Institute, east of Michigan Avenue, south of Randolph Street, and west of Columbus Drive, had been Illinois Central rail yards and parking lots until 1997, when it was made available for development by the city as Millennium Park. As of 2007, Millennium Park, which is located in the northwest corner of Grant Park, trails only Navy Pier as a Chicago tourist attraction.

The earliest plans for Millennium Park were unveiled by Chicago's mayor, Richard M. Daley, in March 1998 and included "a reflecting pool that would double as a skating rink in winter". The architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill came up with the master plan for the park; their original design for the ice rink placed it along upper Randolph Street, on the park's northern edge. However, McCormick Tribune Plaza & Ice Rink was built on the western edge of Millennium Park. The Chicago Tribune's Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Blair Kamin called this move "a masterstroke" and praised the new location "where the skaters symbolize the year-round vitality of the city". Kamin noted the location on the east side of Michigan Avenue allowed those at the plaza and ice rink to enjoy the skyline of the Historic Michigan Boulevard District. Another addition to the plaza and rink's design was the 300-seat restaurant; the final architectural design was completed by OWP&P Architects, who were also the architects for the adjoining Wrigley Square.

Although the rink was budgeted for $5 million, it was constructed for only $3.2 million ($4.1 million today), making it one of the few Millennium Park attractions to cost less than was initially budgeted. The rink was funded by and named for the McCormick Tribune Foundation, which was established by former Chicago Tribune owner and publisher Robert R. McCormick. The McCormick Tribune Foundation is a supporter of the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum and the McCormick Tribune Campus Center at the Illinois Institute of Technology, both of which are also located in Chicago.

McCormick Tribune Plaza & Ice Rink was the first feature in Millennium Park to open. Its grand opening was celebrated on December 20, 2001, a few weeks ahead of the Millennium Park underground parking garage. Mayor Daley, McCormick Tribune Foundation Chairman of the Board John W. Madigan, Millennium Park private donor group chief John Bryan, actress Bonnie Hunt and other local celebrities attended the event. The new ice rink was seen as a replacement for "Skate on State", a public skating rink on State Street in the Loop which closed in 2001.

From June 21 to September 15, 2002, McCormick Tribune Plaza hosted the inaugural exhibit in Millennium Park, Exelon Presents Earth From Above by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, a French aerial photographer. Arthus-Bertrand used planes and helicopters to photograph sites in over 60 countries on every continent, and displayed more than 120 of these photographs in dozens of cities, starting in Paris and including Tokyo and Geneva. In the summer of 2002, the book associated with the exhibit had sold over 1.5 million copies, and the photographs were displayed in Brazil, Lebanon, Poland, Sweden, Germany, Britain, Norway, Hungary and along the banks of the Volga River in Russia.

Chicago was the first American city to host the Earth From Above exhibition. The exhibit featured 4-by-6-foot (1.2 m × 1.8 m) photographic prints that were laminated onto thin 5-by-7.5-foot (1.5 m × 2.3 m) aluminum panels that protected them from ultraviolet rays. The photographs included scenes of natural beauty such as a Filipino Bajau village built on coral reefs, a formation of rocks in Madagascar, an inlet in the Ionian Islands that is home to endangered sea turtles, and architectural highlights such as the Palace of Versailles and the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. It also showed scenes of tragedy such as the 1999 earthquake in Turkey and the destruction of the Amazonian rain forest. The exhibit used photovoltaic solar panels to store electrical energy during the day that then lit the exhibit at night.

Part of the 2006 film The Weather Man, starring Nicolas Cage, was shot at the rink. In 2008, Millennium Park hosted a winter celebration called the Museum of Modern Ice. The installation included a 95-by-12-foot (29.0 m × 3.7 m) ice wall in the park and a large abstract painting by Gordon Halloran, which was embedded in the McCormick Tribune Ice Rink. The works were titled Paintings Below Zero. In 2008–2009 the logo for the unsuccessful Chicago bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics was displayed in the rink's ice.

The ice rink served as the "headquarters" for the 2011 edition of Hockey Weekend Across America; the NHL on NBC broadcast its studio coverage from the rink on February 20 of that year. Eddie Olczyk opened the show by skating with the Stanley Cup in the Millennium Park rink.