If you've lived at One Bennett Park for more than a season, you've walked past the fenced triangle of scrub grass where DuSable Lake Shore Drive curves toward the river mouth. Chain link, a few gulls, a view of Lake Point Tower across the water. It's been there long enough that most residents stopped asking what it was for. That changed this week.
On August 23, the Chicago Park District confirmed it has hired a sculptor and an architect to design a monument at that site, the clearest sign yet that DuSable Park, a project that has been promised and shelved since 1987, is actually going to happen on a schedule you can hold the city to.
Forty Years of Nothing on That Corner
The land was gifted to the Chicago Park District by Mayor Harold Washington in 1987, dedicated to Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, the trader who established Chicago's first permanent settlement near the river's mouth in the 1780s. What followed was four decades of near misses. A 2000 plan to lease the land for a parking lot drew enough public pushback that the district shelved it. Two more attempts at a public design process, in 2001 and 2004, ended without a shovel in the ground. When the Chicago Spire was still alive on the site directly across Lake Shore Drive, its developer offered as much as $9.6 million toward finishing the park in exchange for a ramp that would have carved into the parkland. The Spire collapsed financially in 2010, and the ramp deal went with it.
What finally moved the project was the thing that replaced the Spire. Related Midwest's 400 Lake Shore development, rising on the same site the Spire once occupied, brought both construction momentum and a funding partner. The Chicago Plan Commission gave the redesigned park its first city approvals in October 2025, clearing the way for construction the park district said would start that spring. That window is already behind us as of this writing, which means whatever site activity you've noticed behind the fencing this summer is very likely the actual start of the project rather than another stalled promise.
The Sculptor Just Got Hired
The park district's newest step is the one that makes this feel real rather than aspirational. Sculptor Branly Cadet and architect Rodney Leon have been selected to design the park's central monument, a full-body statue of DuSable. Cadet's other public work includes the Ark of Return at United Nations headquarters in New York and the Jackie Robinson Memorial at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, so this isn't a first commission for either of them. Both are American-born artists of Haitian descent, a detail the park district weighted deliberately in its selection given that DuSable himself was born in what is now Haiti.
Park District Superintendent and CEO Carlos Ramirez-Rosa framed the hire as more than a formality:
"Through their visionary art, Branly Cadet and Rodney Leon will pioneer a powerful tribute to Chicago's first permanent settler."
A design team with that resume doesn't get hired for a project that's still years from breaking ground. It gets hired for one that has a construction calendar.
Why a Private Tower Is Paying for Your Public Park
The mechanics behind this project are worth understanding, because they explain why the timeline is more trustworthy than the last three decades of promises. The park carries a $15 million price tag, and Related Midwest is covering $10 million of it as part of the 400 Lake Shore development next door. That's not a naming-rights gesture. It's the developer underwriting two thirds of a public park's construction because a finished DuSable Park makes the residential towers it's building across the street worth more.
That arrangement means the park's progress is tied, in practice, to the tower's progress. As of January 2026, crews were pouring the 66th floor of the 858-foot North Tower, with exterior glass wrapped up through the 47th floor. A second, roughly 765-foot South Tower is planned once the first is finished, sharing underground parking with the first phase. If you want a read on how the park is coming along without walking down to check the fencing yourself, watching that crane is a reasonable proxy.
What's Actually Going Into the Ground
The design, from Ross Barney Architects and Brook Architecture, treats the 3.4-acre peninsula as a full landscape rather than a single monument sitting on a lawn. According to renderings the firms have submitted to the park district, the finished park will include:
- An entry plaza connecting to an elliptical promenade that frames the site
- A boardwalk tracing the edge of the peninsula along the water
- Restored wetland and prairie plantings meant to echo the landscape DuSable and his wife Kitihawa would have encountered when they arrived around 1778
- A trio of low hills breaking up the otherwise flat peninsula
- A mural wall and interpretive signage charting DuSable's life and his relationship with Kitihawa and the region's Native nations
- A direct connection to the Riverwalk and to Navy Pier's Flyover, the elevated Lakefront Trail segment that runs along the east side of Lake Shore Drive
That last point matters most for daily use. Right now, the Lakefront Trail detours around this stretch. Once the connection is built, the gap between the Riverwalk and the Flyover closes, which means a continuous path from the river to Navy Pier that doesn't currently exist.
Two Timelines, One Honest Guess
Here's where it's worth being precise rather than optimistic. Coverage from the Chicago Sun-Times and CBS Chicago, reporting on the October 2025 approvals, described the park as opening to the public by mid-2027. The park district's own request for qualifications document, circulated in the spring for the statue commission, lists completion as projected for the third quarter of 2027.
Those aren't the same date. Splitting the difference, the honest expectation for anyone living at One Bennett Park is a second-half-of-2027 opening, not a spring one. Given how long this parcel has sat behind chain link, a few months of slippage inside a stated construction window is a minor concern compared to the previous three decades of no window at all.
What to Do With the View Until Then
None of this changes what's already working along your stretch of the lakefront this summer. Navy Pier's fireworks run free every Wednesday at 9 p.m. and Saturday at 10 p.m. through September 5, and the pier's Summer Block Party returns for a second date on August 26 with live music and a dance competition on the South Dock. Both are a short walk from the building, and both will still be running long after the DuSable Park fencing comes down for good.
The dining options on your end of the neighborhood aren't waiting on any construction schedule either. RPM Italian and Joe's Seafood remain the reservations-required end of the spectrum, while Beatrix and Cupitol Coffee & Eatery cover the version of that same walk that starts with coffee instead of a wine list.
What changes by late 2027 is what's on the other side of Lake Shore Drive when you look east from your window or your rooftop terrace. A fenced lot that has outlasted three different city administrations without a finished shovel of dirt is now attached to a hired sculptor, a signed funding commitment, and a tower you can watch rise in real time next door. That's a different kind of promise than the ones this parcel has made before.
If you keep an eye on how projects like this reshape a block over time, or you simply want someone tracking Streeterville's changes as closely as you do, Mike Larson is glad to talk through what it means for the neighborhood. Schedule a confidential consultation whenever the timing is right.
