[BCNnet] Chicago Tribune Lake Calumet article

Tue, 8 Jul 2003 17:38:25 EDT

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BCNnet-
I am attempting to post a recent Chicago Tribune article on the Lake Calumet 
area. Hopefully it will go through!

Walter Marcisz, Chicago, Cook Co.
WJMarcisz@aol.com

--------------------

> Chicago's last frontier
> --------------------
> 
> 
> July 7, 2003
> 
> The prospect sounds fanciful. For relatively little investment, the
> Chicago area can recycle some 4,000 essentially unused acres for an
> array of natural and recreational uses, plus an additional 1,000 acres
> that would be ideal for jobs-rich industrial development.
> 
> Where to find such a pending paradise? The answer morphs from the
> fanciful straight to the bizarre: the reaches around Lake Calumet on the
> Southeast Side of Chicago--an area written off for dead by millions of
> metropolitan residents who think of it as another era's wasteland.
> 
> This is one of urban America's least likely gems in waiting, a
> collection of once-pristine land parcels that were manhandled for a
> century by Rust Belt industries--steel mills, refineries, chemical
> plants--and then largely abandoned. In his 2002 book "A Natural History
> of the Chicago Region," author Joel Greenberg correctly wrote that the
> Lake Calumet area "has experienced every abuse that a wealthy society
> can subject to a small surface of the earth except significant radiation
> exposure and warfare."
> 
> Yet the possibilities for this, Chicago's last frontier, are as enticing
> as the area itself is resilient. Despite the long onslaught from humans,
> nature has never surrendered. The Lake Calumet area teems not just with
> landfills and spent industrial hulks, but with astonishingly rich
> assortments of flora and fauna--including black-crowned night herons,
> egrets and more than 200 other types of birds that visit annually. Its
> lands and waterways are the makings of a resource that hikers,
> bicyclists, canoeists and students of nature should greatly enjoy. And
> the potential for industrial development is substantial: According to an
> excellent master plan drafted by the city's Department of Planning and
> Development, the Lake Calumet area has about 60 percent of the land now
> available for industrial use in Chicago.
> 
> A century ago, Daniel Burnham's "Plan of Chicago" anticipated a "lake
> park set in one of the greatest manufacturing districts in the world."
> The Lake Calumet area got swamped by industry, but only now is Burnham's
> blended vision a real possibility. In the meantime, other proposals--to
> host a World's Fair or a huge new airport there--have come and gone.
> 
> The push to redevelop the area hasn't attracted much public
> attention--in part because the players involved largely agree on what
> needs to be done. This is the rare occasion in which environmentalists,
> industrialists and government officials aren't tearing at one another's
> throats. There's plenty of land for both natural and industrial
> purposes, with some parcels clearly better suited for one use or the
> other.
> 
> The question is how to speed the pace of the project and push aside
> remaining obstacles--tasks that Mayor Richard Daley, Gov. Rod
> Blagojevich and John Stroger, president of the Cook County Board, could
> accomplish in short order.
> 
> Thus far, Daley and Michael Quigley, a member of the County Board, have
> exerted the most leadership in resurrecting the region. Daley has
> overseen the city's key role in reclaiming and environmentally scrubbing
> some land parcels for transfer to the Illinois Department of Natural
> Resources (IDNR). Thankfully, Daley also nixed a foolish proposal by the
> Illinois International Port District, which oversees shipping
> activities, to stick a marina capable of holding 1,000 pleasure boats in
> Lake Calumet; the plan would have further polluted the lake and
> prevented it from emerging as a nature locale.
> 
> For his part, Quigley last year authored a report that elaborately
> detailed imaginative ways for the Cook County Forest Preserve District,
> which owns some land in the area, to much more aggressively acquire
> parcels for conservation and recreation purposes. That's a crucial need:
> Because almost all of the district's land is in suburbia, city residents
> are badly underserved. That's not slated to change: All of the land
> purchases proposed for the county's $17 million acquisition fund are in
> the suburbs.
> 
> But roughly 90 percent of the 5,000 acres in the Lake Calumet master
> plan is inside Chicago. It's likely the district will never again have
> this promising a chance to get its mitts on so much city property.
> 
> Stroger and the County Board, which also oversees the Forest Preserve
> District, should nudge the district to mimic IDNR and use the city as a
> middleman to help acquire and environmentally prepare properties to
> become public open space. Right now, only about 1,600 of the planned
> 4,000 acres of open space qualify as protected wetlands and natural
> areas. For the county, the opportunity to acquire and move more acres
> under protection is a no-brainer.
> 
> To further accelerate the pace of change in the area, Daley and
> Blagojevich would be shrewd to explore dismantling the Port District and
> distributing its responsibilities to other agencies. Because Chicago's
> port is relatively small, the district has been casting about for a
> mission, as its marina scheme and its construction of two golf courses
> suggest. The Port District treats Lake Calumet as something to be fenced
> off, accessible not to the general public, but only to maritime users
> and some local fishermen.
> 
> Moving the golf courses to the Chicago Park District, and transferring
> the Port District's maritime operations to city or state control, could
> free up much of the Port District's currently underused landholdings
> near the lake for industrial development, or for open space that IDNR or
> the Forest Preserve District could manage with more expertise. Beyond
> quickening the pace at which that plan comes to fruition, such moves
> also would eliminate a half-century-old unit of government whose reason
> to exist seems increasingly elusive.
> 
> The Lake Calumet region, part of a wetlands system that extends from the
> Bishop Ford Freeway on the west to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore
> on the east, deserves more imaginative stewardship. What's difficult for
> first-time visitors to grasp about the rebirth of the area is that most
> of its land is not hopelessly polluted. So far, the city has found that
> most environmental challenges there are surmountable. Parcels abused by
> prior industries won't ever be pure--but they can be made well short of
> hazardous and, in most cases, revived for new industrial uses. That's
> happening today on land the city is preparing for IDNR.
> 
> Daley and his planning and environmental staffers haven't received the
> credit they deserve for envisioning the Lake Calumet region's next life.
> Achieving that end as rapidly as possible is an accomplishment Daley,
> Blagojevich and Stroger could point to with tremendous pride. The more
> ambitiously they move, the sooner Chicago's last frontier will emerge as
> one of its finest.
> 
> 
> Copyright (c) 2003, Chicago Tribune
> 
> --------------------
> Improved archives!
> 
> Searching Chicagotribune.com archives back to 1985 is cheaper and easier
> than ever. New prices for multiple articles can bring your cost down to
> as low as 30 cents an article: http://www.chicagotribune.com/archives
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

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<HTML>BCNnet-
 I am attempting to post a recent Chicago Tribune article on the Lake Cal=
umet area. Hopefully it will go through!
 
 Walter Marcisz, Chicago, Cook Co.
 WJMarcisz@aol.com
 
 --------------------
 
 <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=3DCITE style=3D"BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px so=
lid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Chicago's last=20=
frontier
 --------------------
 
 
 July 7, 2003
 
 The prospect sounds fanciful. For relatively little investment, the
 Chicago area can recycle some 4,000 essentially unused acres for an
 array of natural and recreational uses, plus an additional 1,000 acres
 that would be ideal for jobs-rich industrial development.
 
 Where to find such a pending paradise? The answer morphs from the
 fanciful straight to the bizarre: the reaches around Lake Calumet on the
 Southeast Side of Chicago--an area written off for dead by millions of
 metropolitan residents who think of it as another era's wasteland.
 
 This is one of urban America's least likely gems in waiting, a
 collection of once-pristine land parcels that were manhandled for a
 century by Rust Belt industries--steel mills, refineries, chemical
 plants--and then largely abandoned. In his 2002 book "A Natural History
 of the Chicago Region," author Joel Greenberg correctly wrote that the
 Lake Calumet area "has experienced every abuse that a wealthy society
 can subject to a small surface of the earth except significant radiation
 exposure and warfare."
 
 Yet the possibilities for this, Chicago's last frontier, are as enticing
 as the area itself is resilient. Despite the long onslaught from humans,
 nature has never surrendered. The Lake Calumet area teems not just with
 landfills and spent industrial hulks, but with astonishingly rich
 assortments of flora and fauna--including black-crowned night herons,
 egrets and more than 200 other types of birds that visit annually. Its
 lands and waterways are the makings of a resource that hikers,
 bicyclists, canoeists and students of nature should greatly enjoy. And
 the potential for industrial development is substantial: According to an
 excellent master plan drafted by the city's Department of Planning and
 Development, the Lake Calumet area has about 60 percent of the land now
 available for industrial use in Chicago.
 
 A century ago, Daniel Burnham's "Plan of Chicago" anticipated a "lake
 park set in one of the greatest manufacturing districts in the world."
 The Lake Calumet area got swamped by industry, but only now is Burnham's
 blended vision a real possibility. In the meantime, other proposals--to
 host a World's Fair or a huge new airport there--have come and gone.
 
 The push to redevelop the area hasn't attracted much public
 attention--in part because the players involved largely agree on what
 needs to be done. This is the rare occasion in which environmentalists,
 industrialists and government officials aren't tearing at one another's
 throats. There's plenty of land for both natural and industrial
 purposes, with some parcels clearly better suited for one use or the
 other.
 
 The question is how to speed the pace of the project and push aside
 remaining obstacles--tasks that Mayor Richard Daley, Gov. Rod
 Blagojevich and John Stroger, president of the Cook County Board, could
 accomplish in short order.
 
 Thus far, Daley and Michael Quigley, a member of the County Board, have
 exerted the most leadership in resurrecting the region. Daley has
 overseen the city's key role in reclaiming and environmentally scrubbing
 some land parcels for transfer to the Illinois Department of Natural
 Resources (IDNR). Thankfully, Daley also nixed a foolish proposal by the
 Illinois International Port District, which oversees shipping
 activities, to stick a marina capable of holding 1,000 pleasure boats in
 Lake Calumet; the plan would have further polluted the lake and
 prevented it from emerging as a nature locale.
 
 For his part, Quigley last year authored a report that elaborately
 detailed imaginative ways for the Cook County Forest Preserve District,
 which owns some land in the area, to much more aggressively acquire
 parcels for conservation and recreation purposes. That's a crucial need:
 Because almost all of the district's land is in suburbia, city residents
 are badly underserved. That's not slated to change: All of the land
 purchases proposed for the county's $17 million acquisition fund are in
 the suburbs.
 
 But roughly 90 percent of the 5,000 acres in the Lake Calumet master
 plan is inside Chicago. It's likely the district will never again have
 this promising a chance to get its mitts on so much city property.
 
 Stroger and the County Board, which also oversees the Forest Preserve
 District, should nudge the district to mimic IDNR and use the city as a
 middleman to help acquire and environmentally prepare properties to
 become public open space. Right now, only about 1,600 of the planned
 4,000 acres of open space qualify as protected wetlands and natural
 areas. For the county, the opportunity to acquire and move more acres
 under protection is a no-brainer.
 
 To further accelerate the pace of change in the area, Daley and
 Blagojevich would be shrewd to explore dismantling the Port District and
 distributing its responsibilities to other agencies. Because Chicago's
 port is relatively small, the district has been casting about for a
 mission, as its marina scheme and its construction of two golf courses
 suggest. The Port District treats Lake Calumet as something to be fenced
 off, accessible not to the general public, but only to maritime users
 and some local fishermen.
 
 Moving the golf courses to the Chicago Park District, and transferring
 the Port District's maritime operations to city or state control, could
 free up much of the Port District's currently underused landholdings
 near the lake for industrial development, or for open space that IDNR or
 the Forest Preserve District could manage with more expertise. Beyond
 quickening the pace at which that plan comes to fruition, such moves
 also would eliminate a half-century-old unit of government whose reason
 to exist seems increasingly elusive.
 
 The Lake Calumet region, part of a wetlands system that extends from the
 Bishop Ford Freeway on the west to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore
 on the east, deserves more imaginative stewardship. What's difficult for
 first-time visitors to grasp about the rebirth of the area is that most
 of its land is not hopelessly polluted. So far, the city has found that
 most environmental challenges there are surmountable. Parcels abused by
 prior industries won't ever be pure--but they can be made well short of
 hazardous and, in most cases, revived for new industrial uses. That's
 happening today on land the city is preparing for IDNR.
 
 Daley and his planning and environmental staffers haven't received the
 credit they deserve for envisioning the Lake Calumet region's next life.
 Achieving that end as rapidly as possible is an accomplishment Daley,
 Blagojevich and Stroger could point to with tremendous pride. The more
 ambitiously they move, the sooner Chicago's last frontier will emerge as
 one of its finest.
 
 
 Copyright (c) 2003, Chicago Tribune
 
 --------------------
 Improved archives!
 
 Searching Chicagotribune.com archives back to 1985 is cheaper and easier
 than ever. New prices for multiple articles can bring your cost down to
 as low as 30 cents an article: http://www.chicagotribune.com/archives
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 </BLOCKQUOTE>
 
 </HTML>

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