Lynn Osmond leads the Chicago Architecture Center
Osmond steers Chicago Architecture Center through turbulent waters during pandemic
No need to hit a jazz club or Second City if you’re hungry for some improv. Thanks to COVID-19, there is plenty of improvisation going on at the Chicago Architecture Center, the nonprofit best known for its architecture tours.
Consider the center’s popular Chicago River cruise, a 90-minute, docent-led tour that glides by iconic skyscrapers. It used to run seven days a week, 250 people per boat. Now, with tourist traffic down, that’s been cut to 3 1⁄2 and crowds are limited to 90. Because tickets go for an average of $48 apiece, that means a lot less revenue.
“Some Saturdays we’re selling out. And then on a Sunday, we’re going out with a boat that’s a quarter full. It’s random,” Lynn Osmond, the center’s longtime president and CEO, said in a recent interview.
In 2018, when Osmond opened the center’s sparkling new home at 111 E. Wacker Drive, with its towering skyscraper models, it marked the fulfillment of years of planning and fundraising — and promised a future of limitless possibilities. All that changed in mid-March when the center shut down for an unanticipated, nearly 3 1⁄2-month hiatus.
Osmond and her staff had to rethink nearly every aspect of the center, from its Open House Chicago architecture festival to its business model.
In the past, tours accounted for the vast majority of the center’s revenue. Yet with the tours canceled in the early months of the pandemic, there was a desperate need for new revenue. A $1 million loan from the federal Paycheck Protection Program provided a temporary stopgap. But after it ran out at the end of June, the center was forced to cut full- and part-time staff, reducing its workforce to 52 from 82, Osmond said.
To stave off additional cuts and carry on its mission of public education, the center is moving aggressively to win grants from philanthropies.
It’s also altered its walking tours, which typically cost $26 per person, to accommodate social distancing. Previously, attendance was capped at 15 people. Now, the limit is six, and everyone has to wear a mask or face shield.
Other innovations include September boat tours led by architects whose have designed buildings along the river and an online lecture series, which will feature a November talk by Jeanne Gang. Even when the pandemic ends and in-person attendance resumes, that format will likely continue.
“COVID, for us, is probably a game changer for how we deliver our programs,” Osmond said.
The biggest changes have remade Open House Chicago, which in the past enticed visitors with behind-the-scenes peeks at building interiors, from Art Deco lobbies to Gothic Revival naves. COVID-19 rendered such tours potential superspreaders.
This fall, the free-of-charge festival will offer exterior and online tours only. Instead of being concentrated on a single weekend, it extend over 10 days, from Oct. 16 to Oct. 25, with the aim of making crowds less dense.
Taking advantage of the outdoor format, Open House will have walking and bike tours of landscapes like the network of South Side parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, including Jackson Park, planned site of the Obama Presidential Center.
The festival also will feature more residential architecture than before. (Few homeowners were willing to let thousands of people tromp though their houses.) Among the highlights: A tour of Wicker
Park mansions called “Beer Baron Row.”
A new app for mobile devices will provide text about the sites, which are in more than 20 neighborhoods, as well as photos and audio clips.
“We have to transform ourselves through technology,” Osmond said. She and her staff solve one problem and “then it’s on to the next crisis.”