(Above) Rendering of The Museum of Broadcast Communications as it will appear in 2009 at State and Kinzie Streets. (Click on image to view larger version.)

October 18, 2008 – Two restaurants, one serving high-end Asian cuisine and the other serving hamburgers, will move into the building at State and Kinzie Streets that the Museum of Broadcast Communications had hoped to occupy by now. According to the museum, State & Kinzie is currently “one of the ugliest corners in downtown Chicago.”

Construction of the museum’s new home stopped in May 2006 when $6 million in state funding, which the museum had been expecting since the year before, failed to show up. The museum then decided to occupy just the second and third floors and lease out the ground and top floors. Marcus Sullivan, an agent with The Kudan Group, says they are still offering 10,000 square feet on the fourth floor, complete with a garden terrace that overlooks State Street.

Each restaurant signed a ten-year lease of the ground floor. Tamarind, currently located at 614 South Wabash, will open a second Asian fusion restaurant in 6,000 square feet of the 62,000 square foot building. The nostalgia-theme restaurant Johnny Rockets will take up another 2,464 square feet, facing Kinzie Street.

The not-for-profit organization has turned to the general public to help it raise $300,000 needed to finish the State Street side of the building, including glass entry, sidewalk and landscaping.

Museum founder and president Bruce DuMont, a former WBBM-TV documentary producer, said in a news release on Tuesday, “No one wants the corner of State and Kinzie cleaned up and the project finished more than me, and every dollar donated to the MBC State Street campaign will go to complete the beautification effort.”

The museum says it owes $4.5 million to Pepper Construction Group. According to Pepper, once the construction project is restarted, it should take 10-12 months to complete.

The Museum of Broadcast Communications, a not-for-profit organization that calls itself “the premiere broadcast museum in America and home to the only National Radio Hall of Fame,” opened in 1987 in the South Loop. From 1992 to 2003, it was located in the Chicago Cultural Center. It is currently closed to the public pending construction of the new building.

 The Museum of Broadcast Communications

 Tamarind

 Johnny Rockets

 Kudan Group, Inc.