A panel of architects who might loosely be described as the local athenaeum of their profession are awaiting, anxiously, the next edition of the bimonthly journal that bears their names.
The new publisher is Steven Polydoris, whose qualifications to take over a critical journal of Inland Architect’s stature seem to be these: he thinks it’s “a great magazine”; he already puts out four trade magazines–Real Estate News, Chicago Film & Video News, New Accountant Magazine, and the Chicago Development Guide; he presumably knows much more about selling advertising than the directors and he’s presumably correct when he promises new economies of scale.
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“We have urged him and urged him and urged him to hire an architect as editor,” said Allan. But Polydoris hasn’t hired anyone at all, although he says he intends to. Inland Architect is being put together by the same person who was already doing Polydoris’s other four magazines. Polydoris says not to worry–editor Steve Klebba, who’s 23, has time for all of them. “A lot of [his] other magazines use press releases.”
Polydoris and the board do not see eye to eye about content. The board proposed devoting the upcoming issue to the southern Illinois river town of Valmeyer, which is being rebuilt on higher ground after being wiped out by the floods of ’93. “It’s like an architect’s wet dream,” Polydoris told us. “A town gets wiped out, and they have the chance to go in and create a whole new town.”
The next issue–the one the board of directors is on pins and needles about–will examine Valmeyer, but not with the A-to-Z rigor the board envisioned. “It’s a great subject,” said Polydoris. “Originally it was to be the entire issue. It’s a subject way too tenuous and tedious to carry an entire issue.”
The logical place to turn was to universities. There were conversations with both the Urbana and Chicago campuses of the University of Illinois and with Saint Louis’s Washington University, where Weese’s sister-in-law Cynthia Weese is dean of the architecture school. She wanted Inland Architect, and was willing to let the journal stay in Chicago. The talks lapsed, she told us, because her school would not assume the existing debt.
Polydoris agrees. As he sees it, the board had been writing checks for two years until he came along. “Now they’re not doing that, but they’re giving comments on editorial. It’s virtually an ideal life for them.”
