Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) and the Chicago Park District have found a corporate caretaker for one of the city’s oldest, smallest and apparently most neglected public parks.

In an email sent out on Aug. 5, Reilly announced that the park district has picked Chicago-based Argo Tea to operate an open-air teahouse at Connors Park, a small, triangular patch bounded by Rush and Chestnut Streets, Wabash Avenue and Delaware Place in the city’s Gold Coast neighborhood.

Plans for the proposal envision a 1,200 square foot “greenhouse structure” designed to contain the teahouse and an existing water fountain at the center of the park. A draft of the proposal did not indicate whether the fountain will remain operational, but in his letter Reilly said that the Argo Tea will allow the public to loiter in the structure without making a purchase.

Argo Tea is expected to sign a 15-year contract that will put the company in charge of maintenance and security at the park. The company currently operates 14 locations in Chicago, including one about a block away from the park at the corner of Pearson and Rush streets.

Representatives for Argo Tea did not return calls for comment for this story.

Gullied by a fleet of skyscrapers on all sides, the park — established as a park district property in 1959 — exists today as one of the last remaining scraps of green space in one of the city’s most urbanized areas. In addition to the fountain, the park features a columned pergola, a pair of memorials honoring State Sen. William J. Connors (the park’s namesake) and a towering elm at the property’s northern border.

In his letter, Reilly stated that the partnership with Argo Tea would mark a major upturn for the park, which he alluded to as currently hosting a “poor maintenance record, a growing homeless/vagrant problem, and ongoing vandalism.”

The alderman passed the blame for these issues onto the “previous Park District regime,” stating that he had tried to engage the agency to solve these problems, “but prior management at the Chicago Park District failed to make notable improvements to the maintenance or infrastructure of the park.”

Reilly promised that the presence of Argo Tea at Connors Park “will help to ensure basic maintenance, new landscaping each season, increased security, dramatically improved aesthetics and the addition of a true amenity for the surrounding neighborhood.”

After news of the agreement surfaced last week, a noted Chicago architectural critic was the first to take a swipe at the plan.

Lynn Becker, overseer of the blog ArchitectureChicago Plus, railed on nearly every aspect of the project, which he claimed was “being sold with a series of half-truths.”

Mourning the city’s decision to hand over the park to a private entity, Becker branded the proposal “the urbanism of exhaustion and surrender.” He scoffed at the project’s designs for permanent benches that “collapse and lock at night,” and said that Reilly overestimated the park’s size at 17,000 square feet.

The Chicago Architecture Blog, a site that catalogs information on buildings in Chicago, gave the project a nearly sparkling review.

“While we lament any public property being turned over to a private entity, this appears to be the best way forward with Connors Park,” read an article posted on August 6.

The piece noted that “privatizing public space isn’t anything new in Chicago,” adding that the length of the agreement and the provisions required of Argo Tea made the Connors Park proposal a proactive deal.

Gold Coast resident Tom Thilman said that the project looked good, in light of the fact that there seemed to be no alternative.

“If we could get the park district to fix it up and maintain it that would be better, but under the current circumstances that’s not likely,” he said.

Thilman is the president of the Gold Coast Neighbors Association, a resident-led group that takes purview over the area. He said that he had not discussed the Connor’s Park project with the group’s board, but he believed that they would have no objection to it.

He noted that the company’s promise to maintain the park could make it a

“more usable space” for neighbors.

In his letter, Reilly said he had confirmed that the two memorials to Connors would remain in the park (though they would be moved to accommodate new entrances), and hinted that the pergola may be removed, noting that “the structure is not a part of the memorial to Sen. Connors — in fact this structure was part of a landscaping upgrade made in 1999.”