HYDE PARK — A rundown pavilion in Jackson Park is seeing new life after being the scene of a grisly murder a year ago.
The Jackson Park Advisory Council has persuaded the Chicago Park District to bring new art to the Iowa Building, a rundown pavilion at 5600 S. Everett Drive.
The group has struggled to keep homeless men out of the building, deal with a tree growing through the roof and other problems that culminated in the murder of 34-year-old Ovadiyah Chandler on June 22, 2014.
Chandler was shot in the head and died and another man shot in the arm that day, an incident that sparked renewed efforts to revitalize the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition-era structure.
“We’ve been working for the better part of four years to save this building,” said Louise McCurry, president of the advisory council.
McCurry and others have enlisted police to help clear out the homeless men who sleep in the pavilion and use it as their bathroom. The litter of small plastic bags often used for drugs and trash has been cleared out. And the basin of the long-broken fountain has been emptied and the Park District has cleared the drains.
“I was bailing out water for three hours yesterday,” McCurry said of the basin.
The Chicago Park District seems to finally have fixed one of the most vexing problems — lights that were on all day at the pavilion and never on at night.
McCurry said groups were finally starting to use the pavilion for kids’ birthday parties and family meals again. She said she thought the park district could raise enough money to fix the newly formed holes in the roof if it starts charging a modest permit fee for such events.
But some problems still persist.
McCurry said when she showed up Sunday to bail out the water she found three women urinating in a corner. After chasing off the women, she said she thought she has also found the cause of the holes in the roof after seeing some of the smaller paving stones on the roof.
“There are 12-year-old boys having target practice — these little idiots are throwing stones,” McCurry said. “It’s a good example of when a place isn’t taken care of the kids treat it like crap.”
She said the pavilion was slowly getting better and the advisory council was pushing the Park District to enlist some artists to help speed the recovery.
Michael Dimitroff, the Park District’s manager for arts initiatives, said the Park District was considering installing new public art at the pavilion at the advisory council’s urging. He said artist Indria Johnson was considering expanding to the pavilion her “Ten Thousand Ripples” project, a collection of 100 fiberglass Buddha heads placed in parks around the city.
He said the sculptures could be installed in as little as a month, but both he and Johnson wanted to meet with the community first to make sure the artwork about peace and tranquility was a good fit for the neighborhood.
“The whole thing is to embrace peace and respect and the things that overflow from that,” Dimitroff said of Johnson’s work.
McCurry said the advisory council was also planning a flower garden to be planted this year and had a wish list for the pavilion.
“Our goal is to get the bathrooms fixed,” McCurry said.
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