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4 GETTING FRANK CONVINCING FRANK GEHRY TO SIGN ON OPENS THE DOOR FOR OTHER BIG-NAME CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS AND ARCHITECTS TO JOIN THE MASSIVE PROJECT. Toronto native Frank Gehry has long been a fan of the Windy City. "When I was a lucky young kid, my father used to bring me to Chicago to go to Mills Novelty Company, because he used to buy pinball machines and place them in restaurants in Canada," says Gehry, referring to the Chicago-based company that was once the leading manufacturer of coin-operated machines. "I've loved Chicago from the beginning, and I still do." But it took Gehry a while before he agreed to work on the Millennium Park project. In the summer of 1998, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's Adrian Smith initially approached Gehry "to do the façade of the band shell that was mostly going to be underground," the architect says. "He thought I could do some fish sculp- tures on either side. So I turned that down." Then in December, Uhlir and James Feldstein, Bryan's chief fundraiser, took a covert trip to Santa Monica, California, to try to persuade Gehry to reconsider. "I thought it was the same project with the decorations on the side, and I said no," recalls Gehry. "Then they said I could pretty much do what I wanted to do." While looking through the perspective drawings, Gehry noticed a bridge, says Uhlir. The architect men- tioned that he had submitted a bridge design for the Thames but had lost out to Norman Foster. "So I told Frank, 'If you do the pavilion, we'll throw in the bridge,'" Uhlir says. Then Gehry asked who was funding the project. "When they said Cindy Pritzker, I said, 'Oh that's different. Why didn't you tell me that?'" recalls Gehry, who won the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1989. "When I realized it was Cindy who wanted me to do it, that was it." Having Gehry on board made it easier to attract other internationally renowned artists. "I think getting Frank raised the bar on the whole park," says Pritzker. "I don't think we would have had the Bean, nor would we have that wonderful fountain. It just got us the best of the best." Snaking 925 feet, Frank Gehry's BP Pedestrian Bridge has just a five percent slope, making it accessible to the physically disabled. MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM 125