Whoa, will you look at that.
Ryan Field lies in rubble.
At least the south end of it does. And the tractors and heavy machinery are sitting there on this lovely Sunday, ready to continue demolishing the rest of the 98-year-old home for Northwestern football.
Named for alum and billionaire insurance magnate Patrick G. Ryan, 86, the field will be replaced by a new, rezoned, $1 billion multiuse, 35,000-seat palace ready for Wildcats football, concerts, and events — to be called, we’ll assume, ‘‘new’’ Ryan Field.
Ryan and his wife, Shirley Welsh Ryan, are giving $480 million for this project as well as for Northwestern University’s $6 billion “We Will’’ Campaign. Lord, the money that rolls around for tax-exempt, nonprofit entities.
I have strong feelings as I look at the bulldozers and excavators and piles of concrete that are remnants of the place where I played varsity football for Northwestern a thousand years ago. That’s when the place was known as Dyche Stadium and, allegedly, would be evermore.
My nostalgia drifts, and I wonder: What happened to the protests? What happened to the horn-honking car caravans?
What happened to the alliance of neighbors, students, professors, activists from Evanston and neighboring Wilmette (the field touches the south end of that town), that was dead set against this thing? What about those doctors at Evanston Hospital, just up Central Street, who decried the traffic and noise the new stadium would guarantee, how they would impact even things like needed quiet in an operating room?
There were a lot of people opposed to the rebuild that will bring at least six concerts and dozens of, per NU’s statement, “community-oriented events such as winter festivals, holiday celebrations ... as well as additional student community programming’’ to the neighborhood.
The protesters got squashed. Big money rolls. The future beckons. Promises mean little.
Indeed, I am curious what “additional student community programming’’ means, or how the courts might interpret those words down the road. Like Metallica blasts, if students buy tickets?
The Evanston Chamber of Commerce declared last fall that the whole thing, “frankly is a no-brainer.” Why? It’ll bring in revenue. And chambers of commerce love revenue. As does everyone.
We deny that at our peril. We’ll get left behind, like cowboys lamenting the end of stagecoaches. And the people who suffer from that money-making and progress, like the residents around Ryan Field? As former Evanston mayor Steve Hagerty wrote in a pro-stadium letter last fall, those folks need to suck it up and ask themselves “if the remaining modest imposition on them is worth what it would take away from other residents.’’
In other words, take one for the team. Even if it ain’t your team.
I remember the hand-wringing and sadness for many South Side Chicagoans that came as old Comiskey Park was torn down in 1991 for Jerry Reinsdorf’s new ballpark that would become U.S. Cellular Field and now Guaranteed Rate Field. Sox fans saw history pulled from under them.
I remember antique Chicago Stadium, the deafeningly loud, historic little venue that had hosted bicycle races, political conventions, championship fights, and, of course, Michael Jordan. It was closed in 1994 and demolished soon after. People lamented that it would be replaced by the much bigger, much souped-up United Center next door.
Jordan himself said he loved the Stadium and didn’t want to play anywhere else. When he came back from his first retirement to play in the final game ever at the “Old Barn’’— Scottie Pippen’s charity game in the summer of 1994 — he knelt and kissed the Bulls logo at center court. Asked why, he said, ‘‘It was either that or sit there and cry.’’
Progress means tearing down the old and building the new. And if progress seems mindless, it’s because it often is. Chicago pro teams are always thinking about the next new arena or upgrade. And colleges? The same.
Imagine — it’s not even clear right now where Northwestern will play its home football games in seven months. Does anybody care?
College football is a free-for-all, and this is just more of it. Conferences mean nothing. When the big powers put together a super alliance some day, you wonder if they’ll even invite tiny-drawing Northwestern. Michigan and Ohio State can seat 65,000 more people per game than NU. So you wonder.
But in their smaller, tricked-out confines, with concerts and the like, revenue streams flowing, folks like the Ryans donating — football be damned — Northwestern will do just fine.
