“A parking lot now sits where a fixture of the Southwest Side once stood. The former home of the Damen Silos was quietly paved over and turned into a parking lot last week, leaving neighbors and local groups frustrated over its future.

“In an email to Block Club, Tadin Jr. said the site was turned into a temporary parking lot ‘for crews working on a neighboring property where a data center is being constructed.’ ‘It is a 14-month lease; thereafter, we plan to remove the lot,’ the email said.

“Neighbors and local groups said turning the former Damen Silos into a parking lot is disappointing and a missed opportunity to create a green space or community area.

“‘No one asked for a parking lot and no one told us it was going to be built,’ said Zitlalli Paez, president of the Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization.

“Tadin Jr. did not have a permit to create the parking lot, he acknowledged. … Long-term plans for the site remain unclear. Tadin Jr. said he ‘continues to evaluate options’ for the future.” (Garcia Hernandez, Block Club Chicago, 6/24/26)

“‘This could have been a festival ground for so many of these concerts that absorb our neighborhood parks for weeks on end during the summer,’ said Ward Miller, executive director of Preservation Chicago, a group that pushed for the concept.

“‘That could have been an amazing transformational project for the McKinley Park community, probably equivalent to what Millennium Park did for Downtown Chicago,’ Miller said.

“‘We are extremely disappointed about the demolition,’ said Kate Eakin, managing director of the McKinley Park Development Council. ‘It represents a gross lack of imagination about what the site could be, as well as failures of government at several levels to communicate with each other.’

“‘The Damen Silos are among the last remaining reminders of the agricultural trade that literally built the city,’ said Tom Leslie, an architecture professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. ‘Losing the Damen Silos means yet another lost opportunity to celebrate the city’s history as the center of agricultural trade.'” (Loerzel, WBEZ Chicago, 7/22/25)

Damen Silos were a Preservation Chicago 2023 Chicago 7 Most Endangered, and it was demolished in the summer of 2025. We don’t typically return to past losses, but this one warrants an update — because of what has replaced it. No new housing, no new park, no community asset of any kind, just giant asphalt parking lot built without a permit.

The Damen Silos were built in 1906 for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway — a complex of 35 concrete storage silos, a powerhouse, and a grain elevator engineered by John Metcalf, standing at the confluence of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal and the South Branch of the Chicago River. They stood vacant from 1977 until their demolition in 2025.

That transformational 23-acre riverfront festival grounds proposal could have happened. BlueStar Properties, the developer and operator of the Salt Shed on the North Branch, had submitted a bid to purchase the site from the State of Illinois in 2022 and remained engaged in subsequent years, working with Preservation Chicago, the McKinley Park Development Council, and the Chicago Park District to structure a public-private acquisition.

The vision was a 23-acre riverfront park and permanent festival grounds: green space for a neighborhood that lacks it, a concert and events venue that could absorb the summer festival pressure that strains Chicago’s parks, and a dramatic adaptive reuse of industrial structures that other cities, including Buffalo, Minneapolis, and Cape Town, have deployed with great civic and economic effect. More than 1,000 neighbors signed a petition in support of reuse and in opposition to demolition. Two aldermen opposed the demolition. Despite purchasing the site at a steep discount from the state, the owner named a price to sell which represented a massive profit despite no material improvements to the site. Regardless, a bona fide offer to meet that price was made by the consortium. Even though the exorbitant price was met, the offer was rejected when the owner insisted on a closing within 30 days, not the proposed 6 months.

The outcome could have been very different if the State of Illinois had sold the site to BlueStar Properties for this visionary 23-acre riverfront festival grounds use. Instead, the State of Illinois sold the site in 2022 without a sufficient public process that could have surfaced the public benefits of the BlueStar alternative. When given the opportunity to participate, developers and preservationists bring a valuable creativity to the City of Chicago and the State of Illinois.

Unfortunately, decision-makers chose to sell the Damen Silos to the highest bidder without regard for other important factors. When publicly held properties are sold, public benefit should always be considered as a criteria. We hope that in future instances when decision-makers face a similar choice regarding the sale of a vacant industrial or civic building such as the Fisk Power Station, the public benefit be weighed seriously against that of private gain.

Read the full story at Block Club Chicago

• Damen Silos Site Is Now A Parking Lot; Francia Garcia Hernandez, Block Club Chicago, 6/24/26
• The final act of Chicago’s Damen Silos, star of movies, hip-hop videos and architectural photography; Robert Loerzel, WBEZ Chicago, 7/22/25
• Damen Silos demolition underway as historic structures make way for new development; Brett Chase, Chicago Sun-Times, 7/18/25
• Damen Silos, Facing Demolition, Should Become Public Festival Grounds, Local Leaders Say; Charles Thrush, Block Club Chicago, 6/27/25
• LOSS: Damen Silos Demolished Despite Strong Support for Public Park and Permanent Festival Grounds Reuse Alternative Plan; Preservation Chicago, 7/2025
• PETITION to Make Damen Silos a Park and Festival Grounds!