Clark Park Boathouse Discussion
Clark Park is a pristine river front park which contains acres of green space and a half mile river front trail, soccer fields, native gardens and a state-of-the-art BMX trail. Also, it has a public canoe/kayak launch and is a recognized butterfly sanctuary and bird watching habitat.
We oppose constructing a 2 acre sized boat warehouse/crewing facility which will negatively impact the park - it will be too large for Clark Park and introduce a 3 story building, surrounded by concrete, increased vehicle traffic, and will interrupt existing activities at the park. The public demands a period of public review to investigate moving the facility to a larger park or a different location.
A much smaller boathouse facility could be constructed at Clark Park, containing canoes/kayak, badly needed washrooms and a public water source, concessios and possible bike rental. Green Space is the most valuable resource in the parks, especially in this one-of-a-kind riverfront park - it must be protected for future generations.
http://www.change.org/petitions/chicago-park-district-and-the-city-...
Views: 11916
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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Really well said, I love millennium park, and the bike rental and storage there is a mixed use, but a great overall add to the area. The same thing occurs in countless parks across the city.On the note of being a Roscoe Village resident (with low rent) who uses the park, my personal opinion is that the open, water run off field that the proposed construction would be located on, is not a loss of pristine land by any means. Considering the traffic at neighboring parks in this area, it underutilized. Many do not even know its there. Now the selfish part of me hopes it remains underutilized, but the part that wants to have improvements and really make the park a larger part of the whole community and not just the few who wonder beyond the grocery store.
David said:I have sympathy for their position. People pay an awful lot of money to live in Roscoe Village, and I'm sure the pristine private community riverpark was one of the things they felt they paid for. I get that. And I like Clark Park; it's a unique park in the city and maybe it really should be left alone. But this seems to me to be an argument between two well-intentioned groups that have differing visions of how to best provide access to the city's natural resources, especially the river. The constant name-calling and misinformation from the Park Council side is really rubbing me the wrong way (the complete exception here is Bill Donahue, who has been informative and polite throughout this thread).
Believe it or not, you can have disagreements without the other side being evil.
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Permalink Reply by Kevin C Dormant on
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I talked to Mike Carroll (Chicago River Boathouse Advisory Committee) on the phone for 15-20 minutes on about April 13th. He sounds like he's the goods. Though not a member of CPAC, it struck me that he should become the spokesman for sensible planning at Clark Park. With the exception of Bill Donahue, CPAC seems to be sorely lacking in effective advocates.
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Permalink Reply by lorraine reder on
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Mark Carroll, from The Rowing Group, A Consulting Firm Focused on the Sport of Rowing, attended our last Clark Park Advisory Council Meeting. He analyzed the river conditions at Clark Park and it turns out there is a blind curve in the river where the Park District proposed building the boat warehouse. If the boat warehouse was built in Clark Park, the building would have to be relocated either north (in my opinion doubtful because of the deep tunnel vents) or south, which is where the BMX trails are.
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Kevin- Please quit trashing our group. First of all we are volunteers. You don't really know us or anything about the Advisory Council. Mike Carroll was at our last meeting. So were six people from Cambr. In order to have "effective advocates" as you put it we need people to participate. Why don't you help us clean up the Park on May 12th?
Kevin C said:I talked to Mike Carroll (Chicago River Boathouse Advisory Committee) on the phone for 15-20 minutes on about April 13th. He sounds like he's the goods. Though not a member of CPAC, it struck me that he should become the spokesman for sensible planning at Clark Park. With the exception of Bill Donahue, CPAC seems to be sorely lacking in effective advocates.
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Thanks for illustrating my point, Bill. For your information, I do volunteer for and donate to a variety of what I consider to be worthwhile causes. Everyone should, and I commend you for the time you give to a cause you genuinely believe in. We are all limited by the number of hours in a day, and we all have to make hard choices about where our time and efforts are devoted, often to the exclusion of other worthy causes. While I may believe as a general principle that whales should be saved and that no one should traffic in children, as a practical matter, these are causes that I neither volunteer for, nor donate to.
Similarly, I believe the members of CPAC who have posted on the chainlink are sincere and passionate about what they believe is best for Clark Park, and I wish you the best in your efforts. But like the save the whales and the anti-child trafficking people, CPAC won't get my time.
CPAC appeared on the chainlink the end of March with the dubious, and subsequently discredited assertion that a proposed boathouse endangered the Garden. Most of the accurate information I've subsequently learned about Clark Park or the proposed boathouse has come from chainlink members who've done their own digging. I talked to Mark Carroll because I believed he would be a more reliable source of information and I also put in a call to Geoff Dankert at the Roscoe View for the same reason.
So, I believe your assertion that I am somehow "trashing" your group is inaccurate. I don't know how big your organization is, but I think it's telling that you feel the need to enlist third party support from CAMBR, the chainlink, or the Chicago River Boathouse Advisory Council. Questioning the effectiveness of CPAC's advocacy in the face of what appears to be an utter disregard of its advisory position seems obvious. You need to assess and acknowledge one of two things: either nothing can be done; or you're doing something wrong in advancing your position.
Bill Barnes said:Kevin- Please quit trashing our group. First of all we are volunteers. You don't really know us or anything about the Advisory Council. Mike Carroll was at our last meeting. So were six people from Cambr. In order to have "effective advocates" as you put it we need people to participate. Why don't you help us clean up the Park on May 12th?
Kevin C said:I talked to Mike Carroll (Chicago River Boathouse Advisory Committee) on the phone for 15-20 minutes on about April 13th. He sounds like he's the goods. Though not a member of CPAC, it struck me that he should become the spokesman for sensible planning at Clark Park. With the exception of Bill Donahue, CPAC seems to be sorely lacking in effective advocates.
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Permalink Reply by Carter O'Brien on
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re: the mention of the proposed Roscoe Street bridge over the river, I posted this about a year ago, can't say I've seen anything that suggests this is in progress:
Not sure how widely this info has been spread, but imagine my (for once, pleasant) surprise to stumble on plans to produce multi-user crossings over the river at Roscoe and George. Anyone have any more details/inside dirt on how close these are to reality?
These would be included as part of a huge TIF-funded overhaul for the Addison/Chicago River industrial corridor in eastern Avondale/western North Center. There actually appears to be a considerable amount of tangible green infrastructure included.
you can see specifics here, please note it's a massive file of about 80 MB:
http://www.cityofchicago.org/content...onNorthRDP.pdf
here's similar info on the south Addison Corridor TIF:
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Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on
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Thanks Carter.
As a bicyclist and urban commuter I think the bridge is the only thing I really care about. A park is nice, and a BMX track is neat. But effective safe bridge crossings that are suitable for peds and bikers from 8-80 are my priority.
It pains me to see that this isn't a priority to the point that others would throw this bridge under the bus for other projects like a boathouse or other neat but very expensive 'features" here when there is so little cash for BASIC Human-powered transportation infrastructure. This isn't venice. Nobody is using the river to get around on. It's nice that people want to have a nice pleasure/sport rowing facility but I think basic safe human-powered infrastructure which this bridge is integral to should come first. Too bad there so little money or time for that when million-dollar boat warehouses come first.
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Permalink Reply by Tim S on
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Did anyone notice in the Roscoe View Journal piece that the proposal by the CPAC actually does disturb the Garden by relocating it south of it's current position as well as dog park, 2 over sized gardens, kids playground and no boat house. All of which has a far larger footprint than the proposed revenue generating boat house.
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Hello, actually the Clark Park Proposal has been out there for some time and the dog park was proposed long before the original boat house proposal was initiated. The original boat house design, primarily for canoes and kayaks, totalled about 4,000 SF. The location and design were flexible and we were working with the park district on limiting the size of it and adjusting the location so it did not impact the wooded area. The dog park could easily be re - located within the park - there is even an abandoned street at the south end of the woods where a dog park could be located.
As noted before, a source of some of the confusion about the original post, was that the "Garden" is the nickname of the BMX track within the woods. The "Native Gardens" are located behind the existing canoe and kayak vendor(the ugly metal boxes), the native gardens would be removed by the installation of the crew facility and boat warehouse. I agree that, whatever is done, it should be ecologically and environmentally harmonious with the river and the surrounding green space. We feel that additional time and resources should go towards finding a different location for this large facility, since it is not what people who currently use the park would like to see there. It will function mostly as a private warehouse for large boats(23' to 65' in length) which are either owned by individuals or private clubs. We would like to see enhancement of the existing public canoe and kayak launch, replacement of the unsightly metal boxes which house the canoe and kayak vendor and amenities at the park which the community has been asking for - a playground, bathrooms, public water source,new concession area, storage for volunteer cleanup and maintenance supplies, a bike rental area, and a SMALL environmentally harmonious building with minimal concrete around it. (the plan on our website shows plan 1, which is preferable to plan 2 by most people who have seen it. Plan 1 is much smaller and could be moved and adjusted to fit into a place within the park which works for everyone).
Rowing is a great sport and growing in importance and there are many available alternate sites available which could be used. We continue to suggest that the Park District look at some of the alternate sites.
The main problem with the appearance of the open green space at Clark Park is that it has been pounded by soccer overuse for years and never had the foundation built up or completely re - seeded. Upon doing this, and adding more gardens etc. the land west of Rockwell will be quite attractive. The Clark Park plan calls for moving the active sports to the east side of Rockwell and putting in a regulation sized soccer field (also known as multi - purpose fields for lacrosse, track and field etc.)
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Permalink Reply by Gecko on
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Thunder & Bill,
Coming from a Landscape Design background and having worked on the design of a rail bridge in Michigan, I can say putting anything underground near a body of water is a bad idea. The groundwater level in most areas is very low, especially near a body of water (only a few feet below the surface in some areas). This means that below the water line, the soil is 100% saturated all the time.
What this means for construction is that enormous pumps will need to be installed to keep the water pressure from flooding whatever you build below the water line. I mentioned the rail bridge earlier. Michigan State University had a rail crossing on a major road artery to the campus that stopped up traffic all the time. They couldn't move the rail lines running through their campus, so they dug down 15 feet into a marshland with a groundwater line roughly 5 feet below the surface, and that's where they put the 4-lane road. Not surprisingly, they needed to install 3 ridiculously large electric pumps on each side of the road to keep the groundwater from flooding the road all the time.
So when one ponders the question "why don't they just build it underground?" the answers given by those you disagree with are in fact the right ones. It would be prohibitively expensive(not to mention energy-wasting) to keep all the pumps running 24/7 for something the size of what you're talking about. You've thought about the architectural solution but not the practical one.
-Nick
Bill Barnes said:I've brought up this very issue but not for the boat house, for a parking garage. Everyone looked at me like I'm crazy. It's a brilliant idea. I'm sorry the dimwitted don't get it. "it'll cost too much" or "the soils too soft" are replies. Nonsense. While they are able to drop 5 million on a ball stadium and 6-9 million on a boat house why can't they provide parking. This goes to show where their priorities lie.
Thunder Snow said:An architectural solution to this problem could be: build the boathouse mostly underground. Millennium Park sits on top of a hidden parking garage and train tracks. There's no reason Clark Park couldn't sit comfortably on an underground boat storage facility and indoor rowing tank, with possibly a river bank berm above (new sledding hill in the winter), open to the river but fully planted overhead, with only a small entrance above.
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Being underground sounds nice -being underwater sounds dreadful. I've done some big temporary de-watering projects for construction sites as well as permanent sump installations for buildings even close to the water table and they are expensive to build and energy-wasters in the long run. Running big water pumps 24/7 has an awful carbon-footprint.
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