Comiskey Park, Our Laughable Landmark
Hot Type is also in their corner. So when Peter Bynoe, the executive director of the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, found himself unable to discuss the “Field of Dreams” concept with a straight face, we took it personally.
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Bynoe scoffed at Malkin and Knipstein for throwing a new idea in his way “at the 11th hour.” But this is hardly the first time preservationists have spoken up for Comiskey Park. Two years ago, before the White Sox, the city of Chicago, and the state of Illinois completed their new stadium deal, various partisans of the old park testified that it should be spared and renovated. Bynoe heard from the Landmarks Preservation Council then. He heard from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
We asked him if he wouldn’t mind commenting on Comiskey Park strictly from a preservationist’s point of view.
Aside from insisting that the momentum of a multimillion-dollar deal is irresistible, Bynoe raised a practical objection to the Field of Dreams proposal. “They’ve ignored the fact that there are two ramps going across 35th Street that will distribute 15,000 people every time the White Sox play,” he told us. “I don’t think they will appreciate being distributed to the middle of a playing field. I would like these geniuses to propose where these people are going to come in and out of the park.”
Sassy. Young. Hip. Urban. That was the concept, Neon was the product, and less than a year after it was born it’s dead. The Chicago magazine spinoff was tagged a “downtown book” by national advertisers, and these are times (hard enough for any magazine) that are deadly for downtown books: New York’s Details and 7 Days are two more luminous titles that preceded Neon into the grave.
For another doleful tale, there’s Chicago Times. Publisher Todd Fandell just sent out a most unusual press release dumping on local financiers while announcing that he “is close to calling it quits on a year-long struggle to find adequate financing.”
