June 11 (Bloomberg) -- Chicago's Grant Park, known as the city's front yard, is so protected from development it took a railroad lawyer named Abraham Lincoln to win permission to build on the grounds. Mayor Richard M. Daley may need Lincoln's persuasive powers.

Daley backs a plan to relocate the Chicago Children's Museum, a private, not-for-profit attraction that draws almost 500,000 visitors a year, to a site on the park, which stretches north and south along Lake Michigan. The city council is to vote on the proposal today.

The idea has outraged some residents, who say it insults the character and history of a city that cherishes green, open space, epitomized by about 25 miles (40 kilometers) of lakefront largely free of commercial development. Daley says the museum will be mostly underground and take up little surface land.

``Chicago has come to a point now where those goals of encouraging more pedestrian and public use of the park and developing the neighborhoods around the park are starting to come into conflict,'' said Timothy Gilfoyle, who teaches urban history at Loyola University of Chicago.

Opponents, some of whom live in nearby million-dollar condominiums, say the museum will lure too much car and bus traffic, threaten views of the lake, and violate an 1836 covenant that created the park and mandated it remain ``forever open, clear and free.''

``The city fathers fought for that from the beginning,'' said historian David Garrard Lowe, the author of ``Lost Chicago,'' (Watson Guptil, 2000). ``Those people really cared about the lakefront. It's so important that you don't have encroachments of any kind.''

Review Sought

To Peggy Figiel, who lives about two blocks from the site, building in the park would illegally transfer public land to private use for a museum that charges $9 a visit to see displays on home safety, skyscraper building and dinosaurs.

Figiel and 29 other residents filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court on June 5 seeking a state review of the city Department of Planning and Development's approval of the museum last month. They say they weren't given an adequate opportunity to present their views. The city council's zoning committee approved the museum move by a 6-3 vote on June 5.

``It's a protected public park and the museum is a private institution,'' said Figiel, 46, whose sons, Sean, 8, and Harry, 4, visit the museum at its current home at Chicago's Navy Pier. ``If they do manage to get into Grant Park and they want to expand, there's nowhere to go but up.''

Lawsuit Support

Figiel's alderman, Brendan Reilly, said Chicagoans have reason to sue. ``Grant Park belongs to every resident of Chicago,'' he said. Illinois Supreme Court rulings issued from 1897 to 1911 upheld the covenant, he said.

Daley, 66, argues that the museum won't disturb the site.

``We are not talking about constructing a free-standing building in Grant Park,'' he said in a May 27 statement. The museum, he said, is proposing to occupy ``under-utilized space below Grant Park. This would not lead to a loss of park space.''

The museum project also will allow for needed improvement to an underground parking garage, said Pete Scales, a spokesman for the Department of Planning and Development. ``This is a rehab project for an existing building,'' Scales said. ``That's something that gets lost in the debate.''

If approved, the new site may be ready for occupancy in late 2011 or early 2012.

Among the earliest to encroach on Grant Park was Lincoln's client, the Illinois Central Railroad, which was allowed to lay track between the park and Lake Michigan in exchange for building a breakwater.

`Very Close'

Lincoln successfully defended the railway's right to put tracks on the land in a lawsuit filed in a Chicago federal court in 1857, said John Lupton, associate director of a document collection project affiliated with the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois.

Two years after Lincoln was elected president in 1860, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court's verdict in his favor. In 1893, the 325-acre (132-hectare) park gained the adjacent Art Institute of Chicago.

Founded in 1981, the children's museum caters to kids aged 2 through 8 and runs on an annual budget of $6.3 million. Museum officials say it has outgrown its 57,000 square feet.

Its new home would be near the Art Institute and parklands on 100,000 square feet at the Richard J. Daley Bicentennial Plaza, a recreational center and seasonal skating rink named for the father of Chicago's incumbent six-term mayor, who was also mayor of the city.

Alderman Reilly said as many as 12 of his council colleagues are undecided on the issue.

``There's a lot of grass roots lobbying to be done,'' he said. ``This is going to be a very close vote.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew M. Harris at the federal court in Chicago: aharris16@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 11, 2008 10:38 EDT