[Note – this web site is the archival home for the foundation and early work of Protect Our Parks which was founded in 2008 to stop the Latin School Lincoln Park Land Grab. The founding members were: Colleen Blake, Herb Caplan, Eurydice Chrones, Sam Granieri, Lita Grier, Frank Slepicka, Tom Tresser, Patricia Yeray, and Peter Zelchenko]
In the Fall of 2007 a group of Lincoln Park Neighbors came together to fight the privatization of Lincoln Park.
We had learned that the Chicago Park District has signed a secret deal with the Latin School of Chicago to build an artificial turf soccer field in the heart of Lincoln Park just south of the zoo. See above the Inside Lincoln Park reporter Felicia Dechter wrote in 2007 that got us going.
The Latin School would front the cost of the construction in lieu of paying annual park usage fees and, in return, they would get almost exclusive use of the facility for most of the year. In addition, they would get the right to put up a score board, lay down donor-ID paving stones and erect signage.
The only times the general public would have unrestricted access tot he field would be during the winter!
Here is the clause in the contract that permitted sponsorships and other monetization of the site.
The city began construction in the winter of 2007 without any required marketing studies, engineering studies or permits.
you sound like typical right wing wackos!! go away and leave decent people alone!!
Actually, you’re half right. I am a left-wing wacko. Preservationists and ecologists tend to be more on the left.
I appreciate your taking action in the matter of the OPC proposed in Jackson Park. I think the central building, at 235 feet high, will be wholly out of place in a historic, F.L. Olmsted designed park. There are literally dozens of square blocks, whole city blocks, sitting vacant, throughout the south side, adjacent to park land. Further changes to Lake Shore Drive (to widen it) also violate lake front protection ordinance. Said traffic / road work projected to cost in the range of $ 175 million. Why is it they need a twenty story tall, 165,000 square foot building, towering over Jackson park? That it is a Presidential center, as opposed to a Presidential library, is also a concern.
Morons we didnt ask for you to file suit we need the revenue. You need to think long term about what Chicago, and this state needs (JOBS and REVENUE). Yet, you continue to get in the way of progress. STOP NOW
A Community Benefits Agreement sometimes described as a:
“Memorandum Of Understanding”
does not have to be done with one particular group or organization. It does not have to be done with several groups or organizations.
A Community Benefits Agreement can be a signed document to the communities and neighborhoods at-large.
A Community Benefits Agreement can be used as a written measuring tool to evaluate and assess progress on outcomes and on proposed goals and objectives.
Laying aside all excuses, placing one’s signature on a document establishing specific items, measured goals, objectives and outcomes that can be evaluated by the community for everyone to see is the key to establishing an instrument that provides ultimate clarity and transparency protecting not only the people in the communities and the neighborhoods of the city of Chicago but also the signer relative to what specifically is to be accomplished environmentally, economically, culturally and in the interests of fairness, parity safeguards against gentrification and protection of the neighborhoods from undo harm.
With a community benefits agreement you have the capacity to make adjustments based upon written criteria if the benchmarks to the established goals , objectives and outcomes that have has been promised fall off track.
If there is no hidden agenda, no hidden information or pre-promised protected business interests then there should not be a problem signing a document that is written precisely on what the benefits, environmental impact, economic impact and neighborhood stabilization outcomes are intended for the homeowners and renters.
So the political question and battle over the next two years will be why wouldn’t Barack Obama, a former community organizer himself not want to sign such a document with the whole world watching?
Keep “”Moving Forward””!
Don’t just “Move On”.
A hint to the wise is sufficient.
Lionel Nixon, President
Illinois Consortium On Public Affordable Disabled And Senior Housing
President Emeritus,
Coalition To Save South Shore Country Club Park
Thank you for suing to stop the Obama Theme Park from building on our historic and very much needed bit of nature, Olmsted’s Jackson Park. Putting a library on it was bad enough, but 20 acres of park?! Including a new golf course?! People on the North Side rightly defend their lakefront parks tooth and nail. See the Lucas faux museum. Are the people of the South Side any less worthy of their lakefront park?
Many nearby spaces were offered to the Obama folks. I am a supporter of his. But he is not a Chicagoan and doesn’t understand about the lakefront parks and how everybody and his uncle has tried to build on them. Nobody is bigger than Chicago, not even presidents.
I support the lawsuit filed by and for Protect Our Parks Inc. Chicago has very little park land per capital. Designated park land should never be allowed to be repurposed for any person (not even a past president) or for any reason. Jackson Park is a Frederick Law Olmstead treasure. I wonder how the people of New York would react if Olmstead’s Central Park was going to used for Donald Trump’s, Presidential Library/Foundation.
Stop the “land grab” and find a different location to build the Obama Foundation Center.