On October 20 more than 400 people packed the Loyola Park field house to rail against a Park District proposal to build a marina on the lake just east of Devon Avenue. One by one they rose to make the usual arguments–the money would be better spent on existing local parks, the project would mean lots of construction noise and congestion, no community need would be served, because few Rogers Park residents own boats.
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City and Park District officials don’t like to talk publicly about the issue, explaining that anything they say might be taken out of context and used to stir up the locals. But privately they say the fears about a secret plan are absurd and, well, paranoid. They say the city has no plan to extend Lake Shore Drive, and the local alderman, the 49th Ward’s Joe Moore, says he’s never seen any such plan. Some Park District officials say one benefit of a marina is that it would add a lot of park space to the lakefront, though they quickly add that the proposed one had absolutely nothing to do with any plan to extend the Drive.
Brad Winick, a planner hired by the Park District to study the issue, told the audience that the demand for slips is growing for several reasons. “Demographic groups that don’t traditionally buy boats are buying them,” he said. “The population is growing along the lakefront, and there’s a tremendous resurgence downtown–as well as a number of boaters who store their boats in Indiana.”
That’s why the activists were so surprised when the Park District proposed building Edgewater Harbor. As they see it, Park District officials either didn’t know about the Calvary fight or the referendum or they didn’t care. “When we heard about the marina at Loyola, we thought, ‘OK, let’s get the message out,’” says Gordon.
Some people cheered. Some people left. Some stayed behind and kept blasting the idea of a marina just in case Rejman and Winick hadn’t gotten the point. I talked to at least a dozen people, all of whom still believed that the city had a secret plan to extend the Drive. They said the city had a history of sneaking projects past people and pointed to Meigs Field. At the very least, they said, it’s good to be vigilant.
