Landmarks group hits proposed museum in Chicago park

The advocacy group Preservation Chicago is using its annual "endangered" list to urge the city to find a location other than Grant Park to move the Chicago Children's Museum.

Usually reserved for buildings and other structures, Preservation Chicago named undeveloped land in Grant Park as endangered.

Jonathan Fine, who heads Preservation Chicago, says it is unnecessary to put the museum in a park that has long come to symbolize a rare and magnificent use of urban open space in the heart of downtown.

Still in the formative stage, the museum has floated a plan to build a subterranean building that would occupy part of a space now used as a garage below the park.

A museum vice president Jim Law says Preservation Chicago officials miss the point that the project is trying to be as architecturally unobtrusive to the park as possible.