Accessibility to parks and recreation activities holds invaluable importance to any and every community. As the largest provider of recreation in the city, the Chicago Park District (CPD) shoulders the awesome responsibility of ensuring that each of the city’s 77 communities are equipped with facilities and programs that meet the needs and interests of the people they serve. These interests vary from community to community and can differ among the neighborhoods that make up these areas. A tailored but equitable approach ensures that every resident, particularly our children, can learn, grow and thrive in our parks. Activities like swimming, overnight camping, seasonal sports and playground activities have an indelible impact on the quality of life of children and their families. This effect has a rippling influence that can strengthen a community and build bridges among neighbors.
In recent years, CPD has committed to and invested in projects designed to draw people from across the city to play together. Under the leadership of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and CPD Superintendent Michael P. Kelly, following are outcomes of some of CPD’s signature programs and facilities that are currently serving the city’s population.
Mayor Emanuel’s Chicago Plays! Playground Renovation Program
Outdoor recreation is recognized by early childhood educators as a critical foundation for the future learning of our young children. More than just a place to play, playgrounds also support a child’s physical, social, emotional and cognitive development. In addition, playgrounds have been known to serve as the anchor of communities, where neighbors gather and community bonds are formed. With this in mind, in 2013, Mayor Emanuel challenged CPD Superintendent Kelly to make a big impact on the city’s playgrounds. Together, the leaders announced that during the next five years, CPD would rebuild, repair and/or refurbish 300 playgrounds in communities across Chicago.
Mayor Emanuel’s Chicago Plays! program has since been hailed as one of the most aggressive playground rehabilitation initiatives in the country. Just two years after its inception, CPD is ahead of schedule and on track to hit its five-year goal in just four years. The rehabbed playgrounds feature colorful elements, soft surfacing and accessible play equipment for children of all ages and abilities.
Nature Programming in the City
While photographs of high-rise buildings, bustling streets and congested expressway traffic dominate commercial images of Chicago, eco-recreation and nature programming have grown consistently in the city’s parks during the past few years. A recent example of that growth is the highly anticipated completion of the southern portion of Northerly Island Park. Once an airport known as Miegs Field, which served a small few, the new nature preserve in its place is open to all. In September, Mayor Emanuel, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin (D), representatives from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Superintendent Kelly joined community members to officially open Chicago’s newest nature area on Northerly Island.
The 43-acre park has transformed the former airport into a beautiful nature area featuring a 1-mile multipurpose trail, a 5-acre lagoon that is hydraulically connected to Lake Michigan, nature trails, boardwalks, rolling hills providing views of the city and refuge for migratory birds, native plantings to attract a wide range of birds and insects, camping locations, educational areas for park programming and a lacustrine shelf along Burnham Harbor to provide fish habitat.
CPD will team with Chicago museums (located within a short distance of the island) to establish educational programming to provide children with opportunities to camp and learn about nature. For example, the pond feature of the island will include an educational video display of the underwater habitat with a live feed to the Shedd Aquarium. Soon, thousands of children will enjoy a visit as part of CPD’s summer camp program, which attracted 45,000 day campers in 2015.
“The remarkable transformation of Northerly Island has fulfilled Daniel Burnham’s ultimate vision for the area, creating a spectacular green space in the midst of a bustling city, protecting and enhancing our lakefront for generations to come,” Emanuel said during the event dedication. “This world-class urban oasis doubles as a giant educational campus for our kids; children from every Chicago neighborhood will now have the opportunity to camp and learn about nature through programming offered by the Park District and our museums.”
Creative Ways to Create Public Space
Some of Chicago’s neighborhoods are extremely dense, making the acquisition of parkland challenging. This past summer, an additional 2.7 miles of parkland became available to residents and visitors of Chicago thanks to the completion and opening of The 606 park and trail.
Located on the city’s northwest side, the new park is a transformative project that turned an old railroad embankment into a recreational trail and park system. The project is a major investment in green space that will benefit neighborhood residents and people throughout Chicago. The park and trail system features six ground-level parks, a wheel-friendly event plaza, an observatory, various art installations, educational programming and other amenities. It serves as a community connector for some of Chicago’s most densely populated neighborhoods including Bucktown, Wicker Park, Logan Square and Humboldt Park, turning the physical barrier of old railroad embankments into a unifying park and elevated trail system. The 606 now provides an urban oasis for the 80,000 people, including 20,000 children, who live within a 10-minute walk of its borders.
More than a decade in the making, the concept to turn an unused rail line into an elevated trail was officially called for in Chicago’s 2004 Logan Square Open Space Plan to add additional green space to one of the city’s most park-poor neighborhoods. Community support led to the creation of Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail, which advocated for the transformation of the unused space. The project was accelerated by city leadership, and broke ground in August 2013. A true public-private partnership, The 606 is funded via a mix of federal and local funding, with almost half of the project costs coming from private donations under the leadership of The Trust for Public Land.
From Community Eyesore to Neighborhood Asset
A few blocks west of the Cook County jail system may not seem like an obvious place for a brand new park, but when there are 5,800 neighbors with children under the age of six within a 10-minute walking distance, it’s exactly what the community needs.
Dedicated in December of 2014, La Villita Park is an impressive 21.5-acre park in the Little Village neighborhood of the South Lawndale Community and was developed as a result of years of planning, with input gathered at more than a dozen stakeholder and public meetings.
But, it’s more than the proximity to the county jail that makes this park unique. La Villita occupies a former brownfield, previously the site of an industrial complex that polluted and degraded the area. Designated by the EPA as a Superfund site, the property went through extensive remediation. The clean-up process was completed in 2009 and CPD acquired the site in 2012. The agency worked closely with the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO), which advocated clean-up of the site for years, to develop plans for the new park.
La Villita Park is extremely significant to the surrounding Little Village neighborhood. Today, the park has two artificial turf athletic fields with lighting, three natural-grass athletic fields, a skate park, basketball courts, community gardens, passive landscape areas, a large playground with a water-spray feature, a picnic pavilion, comfort stations with concessions, a multiuse trail with fitness stations and environmentally friendly utilities.
Before the opening of La Villita Park, the South Lawndale community ranked number two out of 77 community areas most in need of open space, with an open space deficit of 78.09 acres. La Villita Park reduces the open space deficit to 56.67 acres, and South Lawndale now ranks number seven out of 77 with respect to open space need.
Arts in the Parks
CPD’s Arts in the Parks initiative highlights the cultural assets available to Chicago’s citizens and the professionals working within them. Chicago’s parks are full of vibrant experiences and resources in dance, theater, visual arts and music.
For example, CPD provides visual and media art opportunities for all ages and abilities with more than 900 classes in parks throughout the city. Experienced instructors and committed community partners offer visual and media arts instruction in a variety of genres and skill levels. The district houses specialty studios and equipment for ceramics, jewelry/lapidary, woodshop and more.
In addition to spaces dedicated to multipurpose arts experiences, Chicago’s parks are the settings for a world-class collection of almost 300 fountains, monuments and sculptures. There are 11 official museums on park land and nine Visual and Media Arts Partners in Residence.
Public art installations are growing exponentially in Chicago’s parks. Last year, CPD and Chicago Sculpture International commissioned local artists to turn dead or dying trees that are infested with Emerald Ash Borer or other bugs and diseases into living public art. Known as the Chicago Tree Project, the initiative uses art as a vehicle for community engagement throughout Chicago parks and creates unique opportunities for citizens to celebrate the beauty of nature. Each Chicago Tree Project artist aims to create an impact on the neighborhood and park visitors.
Live entertainment in Chicago parks took off in a big way with the launch of “Night Out in the Parks” three years ago. Night Out in the Parks started as a summer series of world-class performances set in neighborhood parks. The 2015 Night Out in the Parks series has expanded past the summer months, and will bring more than 1,000 events and programs to neighborhood parks throughout the city. In addition to providing the benefit of entertainment in one’s own community, the series quickly served another purpose: to attract visitors to neighborhood parks, making them safe havens and hubs of activity while discouraging unwanted activity.
Sports Initiatives for At-Risk Youth
In some communities, sports programs in parks offer a benefit in addition to play and recreation — in many areas, such initiatives serve as a safe haven.
Realizing this, in 2013, Mayor Emanuel and Superintendent Kelly partnered with NBA Hall of Famer and Chicago basketball legend Isiah Thomas to launch the expansion of one of CPD’s most successful community basketball leagues, “Windy City Hoops.”
With additional support from the Nike Corporation, the program seeks to provide a safe environment for at-risk youth throughout Chicago. While basketball instruction is available across the city, this particular program builds on other initiatives designed to expand proven programs that provide at-risk youth with jobs, training and mentoring. The program is at about a dozen parks throughout the city and is targeted year-round to at-risk youth ages 13-17.
“Keeping our streets safe is about more than just police work — it requires that we provide our kids with productive opportunities to learn teamwork and leadership skills,” Mayor Emanuel said of the program.
“For me, as a child in Chicago, basketball was a way that I could enjoy myself, make friends, stay safe and obtain the education I needed to succeed in life” said Thomas, at the time of the announcement. “I am happy to be involved with a program that will allow many others the same valuable opportunities that I had. I was taught to try and use the sports platform to go out and help others and better my community.”
Road Map to the Future: Parks Prove Their Economic Worth
As park and recreation professionals, we know it’s difficult to attach a monetary value to the work we do and the services we provide. Still, CPD set out to quantify the influence of its assets and programming on the city’s overall economic health.
The results: A recent analysis revealed that parks and playgrounds are a driver of economic growth in Chicago. The analysis concluded that CPD properties add at least $900 million to the value of residences located close to parks. Furthermore, major events, special assets and tourism in these parks drive an economic impact of between $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion for the city each year.
The analysis was developed with Civic Consulting Alliance, Global Economics Group and Roland Berger Strategy Consultants and examined each of the 585 CPD-owned parks, making it the most comprehensive study ever undertaken of a park system’s economic benefit. To determine economic impact, the parks’ relative influence on property values and the revenues generated by major events, special assets and tourism in parks were assessed.
The analysis found that residential properties located within two blocks of a park, or 43 percent of all residential properties in Chicago, experience an average of 1.5 percent higher property values — adding $900 million in value to these properties. CPD parks are classified by type and size, including mini-park, magnet and citywide. Mini-parks (playgrounds or small playlots), which represent 25 percent of all parks, have the largest economic impact to property values within .15 miles of a park, increasing those property values by 2.8 percent on average.
The findings confirmed that recent investments made in Chicago’s parks, playgrounds and recreational spaces were benefitting neighborhoods and providing a better quality of life for residents. The information also provides a road map to future initiatives. “The findings of this analysis will enable us to make more informed decisions, such as long-term capital investments, programming changes, marketing strategies and business development opportunities,” Superintendent Kelly said.
Chicago parks are an essential thread in the fabric of the city. In addition to connecting residents and visitors with nature, parks support active and passive recreation, social engagement, community building, quality of life and economic development. The investments made today must be undertaken with a thoughtful approach, not only of the way parks are currently utilized, but also how future generations will expect to recreate.
As today’s park planners, we have a great responsibility to continue the legacy of Jens Jensen, Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmstead and others whose vision and efforts created the park system we’re so fortunate to have inherited.
Jessica Maxey-Faulkner is the Director of Communications for the Chicago Park District. Michele Lemons is the Deputy Director of Communications for the Chicago Park District.