HUMBOLDT PARK — An unauthorized structure meant to be an addition to the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture will be razed next week after persistent outcry from neighbors and preservationists opposing the construction.
Work on the 4,000-square-foot cinder-block archives and storage facility next to the museum, 3015 W. Division St., began in 2022 without proper city permits and approvals.
The controversial, partially built center will be demolished after a permit with the Department of Buildings was filed last week, according to city permit data. The permit calls to “wreck and remove” the structure erected without a permit, though the foundation and footings will remain.
Demolition was scheduled to start Thursday but has been pushed to next Wednesday, Chicago Park District said.
Demolition is set to take two to four days, according to a museum notice sent to 26th Ald. Jessie Fuentes’ office shared with Block Club.
“The building walls will be removed, leaving the site in a temporary condition for the future development of an outdoor plaza for gatherings and exhibitions,” museum officials said in the notice. “These upcoming site improvements are in design, and more details on the proposed concept will be shared with the community once available.”
Department of Buildings spokesman Mike Puccinelli said museum officials will notify the city once demolition is complete so the work can be inspected.
The demolition is a “giant step in the right direction” said neighbor Kurt Gippert, who has been vocal in his opposition to the unsanctioned construction. Gippert and his wife started a petition two years ago calling for the demolition of the structure on public land and for more community transparency. The petition received over 2,000 signatures.
“I think a development in the park is a really highly contentious thing,” Gippert said. “It doesn’t matter what they pay for the property, who it is, what they’re trying to do. It still has to go through the proper channels.”
Gippert cautioned that there are more steps to ensure the land remains in the public interest and that community and city oversight is taken seriously. He said he wants to see the foundation, which has cracks in it, completely removed on the protected landscape and not turned into an outdoor plaza and performance space that could block neighborhood views and jeopardize the landmarked area.
“It shows the lack of quality and the lack of oversight by the city, and there’s so many reasons that beg the question of why should any vestige of this building be allowed to be to be built [and] utilized?,” Gippert said.
“Any reuse of the foundation or establishing a plaza will require approval of the Park District and future permits from the city,” a city spokesperson said.
The city halted construction of the building in 2022 and filed a lawsuit last July against the museum and the Park District, which owns the land, Block Club previously reported.
Law Department spokeswoman Kristen Cabanban said Tuesday the department is aware of the demolition permit. The case is pending and the next court date is March 21, she said via email.
Billy Ocasio, formerly Humboldt Park’s alderman and now the museum’s executive director, previously shielded key details about building the archive center and repeatedly misrepresented the project to city and state officials, according to a damning 16-page report by a local preservationist.
Ocasio apologized to neighbors at a community meeting last year that announced the demolition and told them he is “looking to move forward.”
“We made a mistake. We were caught,” Ocasio previously said, stumbling on his words. “You guys called us on it.”
Ocasio did not immediately return requests for comment but previously told Block Club “honest mistakes were made” that he and museum leadership have been trying to fix.
The new archives center will be moved to 2533 and 2537 W. Division St., said Alexis Smyser-De Leon, director of policy for Fuentes. The move has been well received by neighbors, who have said the center will inject more life to the Paseo Boricua corridor.
The Humboldt Park receptory and stables, where the museum sits, is a Park District-owned building that was built in 1895 for horses and as storage for wagons and landscaping tools. The turreted 1890s building, which was also the office of renowned landscape architect and then-Park Superintendent Jens Jensen, was designated a Chicago landmark in 2008.
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