D'Arcy Does It: Joliet Becomes Dome Of Unity City After 5-4 Tie-Breaking Vote From Mayor

JOLIET, IL — Less than a month after Joliet Mayor Terry D'Arcy cast the tie-breaking vote to make sure that Joliet residents are paying more money for their grocery taxes, the mayor cast another tie-breaking vote. On Tuesday night, D'Arcy voted to award a contract to Sijia Chen, the Chinese-born artist who lives in Los Angeles, to create a $197,000 Joliet-taxpayer funded Dome of Unity sculpture for the new downtown City Square being built across from the Rialto Square Theatre.

Voting for the Dome of Unity were D'Arcy, Pat Mudron, Sherri Reardon, Suzanna Ibarra and Cesar Cardenas. Voting against the Dome of Unity were Jan Quillman, Larry Hug, Joe Clement and newly elected Juan Moreno.

The vote took place around 8:20 p.m. and you could hear several people clap in approval from those seated in the City Council Chambers audience. Most of the people who spoke at the podium urged the Council to approve the Dome of Unity including Lockport's long-time Mayor Steven Streit.

Prior to making his vote, Mudron read a prepared statement he had in front of him.

"Mayor, I've been quoted, and I stand by my quote that infrastructure investments like roads, public safety and water will always remain top priorities," Mudron announced. "But cultural investments like this do not compete with those priorities. They complement them. I know nothing about art, but I do believe in the process.

"There's a lot of people that put in a lot of time that are much more talented than I am understanding art. With that, I endorse the project completely."

Prior to making her vote, Councilwoman Reardon directed her comments to Clement, who had already publicly spoken out against the Dome of Unity.

"I think, Councilman Clement, you may be very happy, if you're not aware of this already, but there is a Steelman that was just a new installation down on Broadway and it's beautiful. And if we can put things like that around our whole town, where people are going from one area to the next just to see these beautiful things that are local artists are creating, I think that's fantastic.

"You have a Steelman."

At least four of the audience members who spoke in favor of Dome of Unity were past or present members of the Joliet Arts Commission, the group responsible for the selection of artist Sijia Chen's Dome of Unity proposal, in October 2024 as their preferred piece of artwork.

The arts commission ultimately rejected all of the local artist submissions including the "Woman of Steel and Stone" proposed by Joliet artist Dante DiBartolo, who lives in Elwood.

It turned out that the city's website received less than 3,000 votes on the 14 proposed art pieces that the city showcased. The 14 art pieces were whittled down to six finalists and the arts commission voted for Dome of Unity, although some members preferred the artwork called Joy.

"There was a clear differentiation of preference to the six submissions and the other eight didn't really receive much favor ... We took that pool of 50 initial candidates, we took the 14 that we thought A) they could probably do the job, and then six finalists and those six finalists had what I would call it (as) essentially a non-artistic person, an interview with the arts commission. And the result of that is the recommendation of Ms. Chen to the Council," explained Dustin Anderson, Joliet's director of community development, who joined the city in the summer of 2024, after serving as the long-time town manager of Munster, Indiana.

"Mayor, I would also like to comment in support of this project," Councilman Cardenas announced. "I think when I ran for City Council ... I'm very passionate about economic development and I invested in the old Steelworkers Union Hall in downtown Joliet.

"We transformed that into a shared office space there, a lot of people from all over the world are coming there, I see people from Spain, Amsterdam, Italy. We had a large group of 20 to 25 people from Italy that came in a couple weeks ago that are traveling the Route 66 and so many people that come to Joliet and we have so much to offer," Cardenas explained. "And I like all the ideas and the gentleman that mentioned all these local heroes and people that are in Joliet, that why stop here with just the Unity Dome? The Unity Dome is Step 1. Let's continue to add more art. Let's figure out in our budget how do we add to our budget. When I bought the Steelworkers Union Hall, the Friends of Community Art owned that. And back then, the city of Joliet, I don't know how the grants were working, they got like $250,000 a year in funding to maintain and put these murals and run those.

"Why can't we all vote to have that put back in our budget so we can maintain and add more murals?" Cardenas inquired. "It seems like everyone here is in agreeance that we all can say the banana with tape is good and some say it's garbage. We can say that the Cloud Gate, you know Jan, I think you're going to give us the Wiffle Ball Dome, because that's how The Bean came, because it's conversation. It was the cloud that was supposed to be done and it became The Bean. Well, guess what, we may have just branded ourselves The Wiffle Dome, I don't know."

After fielding questions from Hug, Anderson acknowledged that Joliet did not know whether the 3,000 votes came from residents or whether the votes came from neighboring towns or elsewhere.

"There was not a Geo-fence on the voting, and I think that is a fair question," Anderson told Hug. "So, of the over 3,000 responses, I think we could reasonably believe that the majority of those people were acutely interested in what would happen on Chicago Street in Joliet, Illinois, USA, but you are correct, there might be some wayward Lockportian or Minookian or someone else from somewhere that did get a whiff of this and did vote for it. That is a possibility, and it certainly may have happened."

Councilman Hug wondered if some of the out of state artists may have enlisted people to vote for their artwork.

"Thank you, and then wouldn't it be a possibility that certain original entrees may have had fans of theirs so excited about their work that they wanted to see them get chosen?" Hug wondered. "So, I don't know if that number can even be depended upon even if it was all 3,000 Joliet residents only, that's 2 percent of the population. If we cut that in half, now we're done to 1 percent depending on how many actually live in Joliet.

"I will say that probably the wisest thing said was Councilman Moreno. 'I believe this belongs in the private sector.' I would love to see us delay in voting on accepting this contract and binding ourselves. I've done some limited research and found that many, if not the majority of cities that have public art do it through a public-private partnership where they accept donations and not tax dollars to fund it," Hug pointed out. "That I could support."

After the meeting, people for and against The Dome of Unity shared their comments on Joliet Patch's social media.

One Joliet Patch reader named Dan proclaimed, "D'Arcy Buick GMC Dome of Despair."

"About as bad as the ugly marquee they wanted on the Rialto," Cedrick wrote.

"Well done Terry! The silent majority has spoken. The city council just took Joliet into the 21st century," wrote Chris.

"Disgraceful decision," someone named Andrea lamented.

"This isn’t causing a lot of 'Unity,'" remarked Rick.

"I know who I won't be voting for next election," commented Ed.

"A car salesman?" asked Pat.

"Thank you, Joe Clement, Jan Hallums Quillman, Juan Mareno, and Larry Hug. Your dedication to protecting taxpayers truly stands out. It’s clear that you are the only ones genuinely advocating for the people’s interests. As voters, we recognize and deeply appreciate your commitment. Your efforts don’t go unnoticed — you are the voices we need," responded Sue.