Its downtown might lack a public but Springfield has built lots of public spaces, just in case. Even though few of these spaces are much used, the city looks set to get another one. The state’s Department of Natural Resources is in talks with the city of Springfield to convert the city’s long-vacant Y block into a park-ish outdoor performance venue.
The project is the fruit of efforts by our two most recent First Couples to see the lot across the street from the Governor’s Mansion safe from development. The genesis of the project was the desire of Bruce and Diana Rauner – remember them? – to have that land made into a park. The JB Pritzkers subsequently have endorsed the Rauners’ hope for a public space that would complement the Governor’s Mansion grounds.
Specifically, the new IDNR scheme resembles a version of “Bicentennial Park” that was proposed back in 2017 by Sue and Kent Massie, the Springfield landscape architects. They included a small space for open air performances, although their version was meant to be a temporary use of a property that someday, surely, inevitably would be redeveloped as commercial property. What was merely a feature of the Massie concept has become the centerpiece of the plan by the Pritzker IDNR. Situated on the north bank of the long-buried creek, the lot is a natural amphitheater. Its potential as a concert venue was confirmed by the popular Levitt AMP Springfield Music Series. If all goes well those concerts might soon take place in a permanent amphitheater with what looks like limestone benches for 500 people plus open lawn seating for an additional 1,000 to 3,000 of the kind of folks who always have lawn chairs in the back of the car.
Even in the menagerie that is American philanthropy, the Levitt Family Foundation stands out as an odd one. It helps “activate” underused outdoor spaces with offerings of free live music in neglected parks, vacant lots and industrial wastelands. (The first one was staged atop an old town dump.) An underused outdoor space the Y block certainly was, and with a seasonal bill of only 10 summer performances even the spiffed-up version seems likely to remain underused. Pritzker said in 2024 that any new development should be used by the public year-round, which leaves the problem of January and February for program planners to solve. I am emboldened to repeat the suggestion I made in these pages in 2017. The sloping site would make a nice sledding hill, and I look forward to our convivial governor coming over after a snow and joining other Illinoisans in a race to the bottom.
Please note that plans are still in the “this could be nice” stage. They include a landscaped buffer along Capitol Avenue (made of prairie plants to make certain no one steals them) and “a natural play space for children.” (That sounds like a dud; children these days seem to prefer to play inside their phones.) Also on the wish list is the inevitable “interpretive signage” – signs with college degrees – that will recall the history of the block, including information about the former YWCA building that gave it its name. One would hope that mention also will be made of some of the other major buildings that died so that the new park might be born such as the Hotel Abraham Lincoln and the Majestic Theatre. For decades the empty block was itself an unofficial monument to Springfield’s failed redevelopment policy; let us hope that this history is noted as well.
It is the duty of us professional know-it-alls to look gift horses in the mouth. The site is prone to flooding and the old Town Branch of Spring Creek still runs beneath it through an ancient sewer; dancing is good, jumping up and down is out. We are told that the construction costs will be about $4 million in state money and maintenance will be trusted to the state rather than to a city government that is having to remove the fountain from the old municipal building plaza because it can’t afford to keep it up.
Unaccounted for, however, is the project’s opportunity cost, meaning the cost of foregoing other development that might have gone there. We also might quibble about the wisdom of building a permanent amphitheater for a free concert series supported by private philanthropy. And remember that this is just a plan and that the Y block became the Y block because the state of Illinois bought and leveled it to make room for a proposed courts complex that the state never built.
Oh well. As proposed, the Y park will be a plus for downtown even if it is not what downtown Springfield needs. City officials touting it as a win apparently took to heart my advice about this block in 2017. When you can’t do what ought to be done, pretend that you ought to do what you can do.
James Krohe has been writing in IT about what became the Y block since 1978.
This article appears in July 23-29, 2026.
