Millennium Park celebrates 20th anniversary this week NBC Chicago [Video]

Chicago’s iconic Millennium Park in the Loop, one of the city’s prime tourist destinations, is celebrating its 20th anniversary this week.

The 24-acre public park in the heart of downtown Chicago is filled with sculptures, trees, gardens and walkable space. It hosts millions of visitors every year, a testament to the rarity of green space in dense urban cores.

“It really is an oasis of calm, an oasis of celebration,” Neal Heitz of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events said.

The department is planning a birthday celebration for the park this weekend.

“Twenty years ago, we were standing on rail-road tracks,” Heitz said.

For decades, the land was used by the Central Illinois Railroad as a parking lot and railyard.

There were many plans to turn it into a lakefront park that never materialized, according to city planners at the time.

Though officials were long under the impression …