This morning I attended a meeting hosted by the Friends of the Parks in Chicago (FOTP). FOTP are doing a study of the “Last 4 Miles” of the Chicago Lakefront that will result in a plan to give public access to the entire Chicago Lakefront. There are two miles on the south side and two miles on the north side.Highlights of the meeting were:
- 25 or so in attendance, all friendly types like Open Lands, Nature
Conservancy, Bicycle Federation, and our collaboratives the ASLA and AIA
- Check out the FOTP web site to see their preliminary design concepts:
http://www.fotp.org/
- It was mainly a show and tell session but they may look to organizations for endorsements of their plan in the future; this meeting and others is a start of a process to broaden their outreach effort.
- Eleanor Roemer, staff Policy Director of FOTP (312-857-2757; (roemere [at] fotp.org), said they were looking for opportunities to present their plans; I told her about our [Illinois APA] conference in October and she was very interested; I told her I would pass this information on to T.J. and his team; I think it would be really good if we could find a spot on the program for this.
- They will be doing a EIS on their plan; they said it would be to the standards of a federal EIS and it will include cost information.
John H. Paige, AICP
2108 W. North Avenue, #2N
Chicago, IL 60647
(708) 790-9896
5 comments:
You may find this response to the FOTP "last 4 miles" idea to be interesting: stopthelandfill.org
You may also find that the FOTP doesn't have the public's best interest in mind.
please- look at the tax implications that would come from this effort. As a taxpayer, I do not want my taxes thrown away. I pay enough as it is. This proposal is not well thought out.
You people are rather naive. Did you ask Eleanor Roemer what reception her group received in Edgewater and Rogers Park when they presented their plans? Answer: overwhelming rejection, confirmed by referenda during the last election.
Did you ask her about costs, construction period, beneficial impacts, negative impacts, where the money would come from? You should have, because you would have found that have NO INFORMATION on anything.
Did you ask her who is in support of their plan? If you did you would have found that a few insiders who stand to gain $$$ if it goes through want it, but no one else.
Did you ask them what projects would be jeopardized as monies were reallocated to their pet project that has no demonstrable quantifiable benefits?
Don't you know that an EIS is done after careful, systematic plan formulation in which benefits are quantified and plans are detailed, NOT BEFORE. You were hoodwinked by these people, and you loved it!
You were right: friendly types attended the meeting. FOTP can't tolerate anyone else since they have no substance behind their plan. \\shame on your group.
Thank you for your participation on this blog article. The Urban Planning and Policy Student Association Blog isn't here to take a stance on any specific issue, but to bring current issues to light and foster both sides of the debate. If there are additional resources or articles that you believe would better illustrate this issue, I strongly encourage and welcome you to post them.
Jerad,
There is quite a bit of data on stopthelandfill.org
The site addresses ALL the issues, almost exhaustively. BTW...... the writers/contributors to stopthelandfill.org were the former US Army Corp or Engineers Project Planners and Project Engineers. There is quite a bit of data including documents, pictures, news articles, video, etc....
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