The city of Chicago is tearing down buildings that a famous architect helped design, even though it lost the Olympic bid.

The city planned to build the Olympic Village on the Michael Reese Hospital campus. There's no developer yet. But a demolition crew is tearing down one of the eight buildings there that Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius helped design.

Grahm Balkany heads a group trying to save the buildings.

BALKANY: This planning process is flawed. This is Chicago proceeding as though it's won an Olympics Games, which will never come. The opportunities of this site are endless, and in delivering nothing more than a vacant lot that goes on for blocks, those opportunities are severely diminished.

Balkany's working to get the site on the National Register of Historic Places. That would mean tax credits for reusing the buildings.

The city's said all along it planned to develop the land, regardless of whether it got the Olympics. The city may save one of the Gropius buildings.