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MILLEN NIUM IMPACT PHOTOGRAPHY BY CRAIG DUGAN/HEDRICH BLESSING I t's an unseasonably warm spring day at Millennium Park. At the Crown Fountain, a group of boisterous teenage boys pick up one of their own by all four limbs and carry him into the shallow water. Backlit by one of the fountain's massive glowing towers, the boy surfs on his backside, letting out a gleeful cry, as the group races to the opposite side. Nearby, couples lounge in the grass at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, while families and individuals cluster on a wooden boardwalk, some with their bare feet in a creek in the Lurie Garden. Even as a storm approaches, a security guard has a hard time convincing people to leave as they take selfies in front of the Bean. It's hard to remember what life was like before Millennium Park. Since its opening on July 16, 2004, it has become one of the city's iconic destinations and its second-most-visited tourist spot after Navy Pier. (It's also easy to forget that Millennium Park is a rooftop garden built over an underg round parking garage.) Despite its 24.5 acres, this urban oasis has an undeni- able intimacy, each of its manageable areas like a cozy room within an expansive house. A decade into the life of this com- munal space of greenery and public art, we take a look at 10 moments that shaped the park's development—and sealed its place in the hearts of Chicagoans and visitors alike. AN ICON IS BORN YEARS IN THE MAKING, MILLENNIUM PARK BEGINS LIFE AS DALEY'S DREAM. Although the idea for a park over the Illinois Central Railroad tracks, east of Michigan Avenue in Grant Park, had been batted around since 1977, it was Mayor R ichard M. Daley who was inspired in 1997 to make it happen. He had grown tired of look- ing out his dentist's Michigan Avenue office window at 90 0 parked cars and a railroad station, according to Ed Uhlir, exec- utive director of the nonprofit Millennium Park Foundation. "He said, 'Let's cover it with a park,'" says Uhlir, the park's for- mer project design director and master planner, who frequently used the story in his many public presentations. After convincing the Illinois Central Railroad to donate its property rights back to the city, Daley's team geared up for a pub- lic campaign. Daley tapped former Sara Lee CEO John Bryan to lead the effort to raise funds from the private sector, with an initial design mapped out by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Bryan knew the park needed an appealing name, so he did what a ny "good consumer ma rket ing person would do," he says, and approached advertising giant Leo Burnett for ideas. "T he na me I liked wa s M illennium Pa rk," says Br ya n. "'Millennium' was not a word in the people's vocabular y so much in 1998, but it does mark a moment of time that is pretty extraordinary. And 'park' is just one of those good, hard, crisp words, like 'Coca-Cola' or 'Kodak.'" A lt hough Leo Bu r net t repeatedly suggested t he na me "Garden of the Arts," Bryan nixed it. "I said, 'Forget it. I'm not going to meet anybody in the Garden of the Arts. We're going to name it Millennium Park.'" 1 Covering nearly 25 acres, Millennium Park trails only Navy Pier as Chicago's most visited tourist attraction. MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM 123