FRIENDS OF THE PARKS AND THEIR VIEW OF COMMUNITY INPUT
Friends of the Parks, the advocacy group was founded to act as a watchdog over the Chicago Park District and its administration of the parks. This alone is a daunting task, especially if the group adhered to its basic mission statement: The park district has over 7300 acres of parkland and over 552 parks under its management. Over 7 percent of the land within the City of Chicago is currently classified as parkland administered by the park district.
In addition to their charity balls and fundraising activities, presumably the “friends” devotes some time to analyzing park district performance and advocating for programs and management initiatives that can enhance the enjoyment of those making use of park district facilities. A list of their accomplishments over the past 30+ of operation is shown on their website. It appears extremely limited. One can speculate on efficacy of their work relative to the monies they collect.
Now the ‘”friends” has elected to expand their scope, targeting two small communities of properties, one near the south shore Cultural Center, and the other the area from Hollywood to Devon, and then on to Howard Street. They have asserted that the existing parks should be expanded to include these areas, essentially by creating landfill in the Lake to affect this expansion.
They have undertaken or programmed a series of community meetings, most of which are unannounced until the last minute, all of which encourage only persons to attend who are supportive of their “vision”.
These meetings are promoted as necessary to get input from the community relative to their wishes and needs. But in reality, they are nothing but perfunctory events, designed to give a false sense that the community was truly involved with shaping the vision.
The “friends” has already determined that lakefront expansion is a given. The landfill in front of our section of lakefront is a given. With that dispensed with, they call public meetings to elicit community involvement, when that involvement could only be to fine tune the expansion plans. Here are their so called planning principles, as found on their website (with our comments in parentheses pertaining to their relevance from Hollywood to Devon):
1. Public Access to Lake Michigan (Burnham, referenced often by “friends” stated that every citizen should be within walking distance to a park. In our area there are three ingress points (Berger, Thorndale and Ardmore in 4 blocks)
2. More parkland and Beaches (There is no shortage of either in our area with two beaches and 3 parks)
3. Completion of lakefront bike path (Currently runs contiguously from Ardmore to at least the Museum of Science and Industry, a distance of in excess of 25 miles. What document or evidence is there that the path was somehow unfinished previously?)
4. Greenway corridors to the lake (See item #1. Any additional corridors would entail destruction of east/west streets and elimination of street end structures designed and built to eliminate Lake Michigan wave overtopping and street flooding.)
5. Restoration and improvement of Lake Michigan coastal ecosystem, including natural habitat (Our area was landfill, so there is no potential to restore ecosystem, short of destroying all properties and removing the very land “friends” advocates expanding.)
6. Preservation of cultural history (Again, while sounding appealing, this objective is not pertinent.)
7. Community based planning effort (The “friends” has already planned out the expansion. Calling their meetings a local planning effort is misleading and dishonest, and an insult to this community, whose views are really not being solicited in any meaningful way.)
8. Attention to previous and current open space and greenway planning efforts (What documents and reports are they referring to? This is just another attractive sounding phrase which upon deconstruction is found to have no meaning whatsoever.)
In summary, a review of the strong advocacy of “friends” reveals that they are pursuing their agenda without regard to the community. Their plans are solid: only fine tuning is necessary. The plans were put forth without community input. The only community input will aid in drawing up the pretty pictures of those plans.
And since landfill extension is a given, there really are no opportunities for residents of the shoreline in this area to see their wishes and views realized. If every person living along the lakefront voiced their opposition to the plans, those plans would still be advocated by “friends”, and plans published and represented as coming from the community, thereby making the whole process a sham.
The arrogance of this group is unprecedented. It should be recognized for what it is: an attempt of a small group of unelected outsiders to impose their views on a small group of people in a dictatorial fashion.