Wheeling trustees recently approved spending an estimated $44,150 to conduct a landscape design contest for Millennium Plaza, the northeast corner of Milwaukee Avenue and Dundee Road.

Trustees on June 29 voted to hire Design Competition Services of Milwaukee to oversee and run the contest on the village’s behalf.

The bulk of the expense, $18,550, will be used to advertise the contest. Another $18,500 will be used for prize money, with $10,000 being awarded for the winning entry, $5,000 for second place, $2,500 for third and $1,000 to be divided among honorable mentions.

DCS expects 350 landscaping firms from across the country will pay the $90 registration fee to receive the design information contained in the contest packet, and between 105 to 140 of those firms will submit entries.

Plan Commissioner Ben Kutscheid, a member of the Millennium Plaza Committee and a landscape architect, said the benefit of having a contest over selecting a single firm to create a landscaping plan is the number of ideas that will be generated.

“The contest is better in that more firms are given the opportunity to give their ideas,” Kutscheid said.

The cost of the contest is slightly higher than what it would cost the village to hire a single firm, Kutscheid said, but again, the advantage is a plethora of designs for the village to select from.

“This will cost a bit more. For one firm to come up with several ideas would be a large task,” he said.

Kutscheid and David Phillips, chairman of the Millennium Plaza Committee, recently visited Channahon, near Joliet, where DCS conducted a similar competition for the design of its Town Center.

“It was very interesting. They had about 150 entries, and amazing ideas came out of that competition. It was obvious a lot of them were professionally done,” Kutscheid said.

Although a first-place winner will be chosen in Wheeling’s contest, it is up to the village to decide what ultimately will be constructed.

Phillips hopes the village will be able to incorporate the winning design into a villagewide streetscape plan.

“Whenever you can get that much creative focus on something with identified design parameters, you certainly are going to have something beyond reproach,” Phillips said of the winning design.

The first major job facing the committee is setting the design parameters for the contest, giving designers an idea of what the village envisions for the corner, Phillips said. Residents are encouraged to offer their input on what should be included in the design packet and how the parameters should be written.

A meeting is planned for 10 a.m. Saturday, July 11, at Cole Taylor Bank, 350 E. Dundee Road. Residents who want to give input on the contest, or want to volunteer for the Millennium Committee, can attend the meeting or call Gary Cohn, publicity chairman, at (847) 215-7427.

Future public hearings will be planned to generate more resident participation, Phillips said. Tentatively, Phillips expects design packets will be sent to potential entrants in August and September, with entries due back in February or March. A winning design should be selected next spring by a jury of professionals and village officials.

“I think the process will be entertaining, as well as stimulating,” Phillips said.

The committee would like the corner to be finished in fall 1999 so a dedication ceremony can be held before the new millennium begins, Phillips said

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