Red Bull BMX Invades My South Loop ‘Hood
The other day a friend of mine told me that he’d heard that Red Bull bought the large empty parcel of land — on Wells St between Polk and Harrison — across the street from my condo. I was surprised, but not shocked. The land is over the old underground train station that used to ship in the paper that gave Printer’s Row its name. Many developers have purchased the land and tried to destroy my view of the Sears Tower, only to discover that it costs a ton of money to fill in underground tunnels. So, back to Red Bull; they would probably be putting a sporting track of some kind on the land, not a high rise, so it made sense.
Anyway, I did a bit of Googling and it looks like Red Bull probably didn’t buy the land, but they are putting on a BMX event in the spot on May 15th. They’re calling it Stomping Ground and the premise is that the lot has been “abandoned” and the BMX bandits will be integrating the “abandoned” equipment and supplies in their runs. Well, until 3am this morning, aside from a couple dirt piles (which were trucked in a few weeks ago) the lot was empty. Now there is a back hoe and two bulldozers sitting there courtesy of a noisy mid-night equipment delivery. I guess Red Bull is staging the lot to look like it’s an abandoned city building site. That’s much more dramatic than just building a course.
Since my living room overlooks the lot and the future course, I’ve decided to cover the construction and implementation of the event on this here blog. If you’re interested in the politics and impact of the situation then check out South Loop blog, Sloopin’s coverage. I’ll be hanging out, shooting pictures and drinking a beer, watching dudes do flips on bicycles. Below are some photos from this morning.
This is the lot in question.
The "abandoned" construction materials that showed up this morning at 3am.
The Sears Tower as seen from my window overlooking the empty lot.
I think these guys are the Red Bullies who are creating the track. They were parked next to the tractors.
That large lot used to be the Grand Central Station http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Central_Station_(Chicago)
There was not an underground railroad there – it was all above ground and the site was razed in the 70’s. Check out http://www.historicaerials.com/ to see what it looked like years ago. There were also some factories along the river – I remember reading that they made the boardgame Tripoley there.
That’s some good info, Edward. I didn’t mean to imply that Harriet Tubman was operating there or anything. I just remember being told that some of the lines ran underground or that there were some delivery tunnels under there that makes it hard to build there.
Unless you’re looking at very new dirt piles, those have been there for many months – the result of two failed attempts to put a surface level parking lot on part of the property. In each case preliminary clearing was accomplished and then the project was shut down, rumor is by the Alderman. The piles were just left abandoned after each of those attempts. They also abandoned a pile of boards that are rotting close to the river.
@Brian. Old tunnel maps do indeed seem to show that the Chicago tunnel system extended under this property – east/west as I recall, probably linking the system to docks along the river where goods were unloaded.
I have another installment going up soon. Yesterday I spied some contractor and business types cavorting with men in uniform; there was definitely a ranking member of the Chicago Fire Department present. I feel like the guy in Rear Window peering down at the Red Bullies.