Soon, Segal got a call from Mayor Richard Daley; he’d seen the planters and liked the way they infused the concrete and steel with nature. He wanted greenery planted down the median strip of Michigan Avenue from Oak Street to Roosevelt Road and asked Segal to assemble merchants willing to fund the purchasing, planting and maintenance of the plants for 20 years.
A committee was formed and Segal, Doug Hoerr, Robert Wislow of U.S. Equities, and architect John Buenz began to collaborate on the design of the medians. Segal and his colleagues formed the Michigan Avenue Streetscape Association in 1991.
Each year they start from scratch to raise the 200,000 dollars from local businesses necessary to fund the yearly plantings from Oak Street to the Chicago River. This is the only stretch of medians in Chicago that is entirely funded by private businesses. By 1993, the first concrete planters were in and ready for plants.
In November of that year, Tribune Architecture Critic Blair Kamin reviewed the new median project. Kamin wrote “Indeed, the best part of the project figures to be Hoerr’s plantings, which will shift with the seasons, just as the storefront windows on North Michigan change, lending that part of the street its dynamic change.”
