Explainer: what is the better alternative proposal?
Maintain our tax base and family housing and solve our traffic and parking issues too!
Parker wants to:
- Expand its massive institutional footprint further into a residential community.
- Install 60 foot stadium lights on its private athletic turf field.
- Rent out the field to 3rd parties from 6:30am to 9pm, generating more profits for the school while reducing public access to free parking, the zoo, trails, and beaches.
Why should you care?
For the past 15 years, East Lincoln Park has fought to protect our community from a predatory, expansionist, non-tax paying private institution that adds NOTHING to our neighborhood or city.
Parker pays ZERO real estate taxes on their current six+ acres of land, and now they want to remove an additional property in perpetuity from the tax base, raising taxes for everyone else.
- Parker DOES NOT contribute to Chicago’s public services like the police, fire, EMTs, or maintenance of sidewalks and roads. They fully rely on the public subsidizing these services they use.
- In the face of Chicago's $1 billion budget deficit and an erosion of public services, Parker is asking our community to shoulder the increased tax burden.
Parker’s SIX+ acres of land makes it one of the largest private school campuses in Chicago. Parker's ~900 students share a full-size turf field, three outdoor playgrounds, and three gyms. Why does Parker need more space (especially compared to our local public schools)?
- Lincoln Elementary School is situated on 1.4 acres serving 857 students with no fields, limited playgrounds and a shared gym, forcing them to transform school hallways into track straightaways.
- Lincoln Park's 2,175 high school students go to a 125-year-old school on 3.5 acres and compete for slots to play and practice on public fields.
Parker wants to convert a vintage courtyard building on a residential street for institutional purposes. Multi-family courtyard buildings are a significant source of affordable housing.
- According to the American Community Survey, in East Lincoln Park 28% of residents have a median household income below $50,000 and 16.4% of East Lincoln Park residents live at or below the poverty line. We need to preserve this housing.
- The 43rd ward has many available alternatives for Parker to expand, assuming that it is truly necessary for a school that houses fewer than one thousand students on six+ acres of land. Such alternatives do not require destruction of or repurposing family homes. Nor do they involve bringing an unwelcome institutional presence onto a residential street.
Parker wants to install 60-foot stadium lights for the field. Further, Parker wants to rent out the field to third parties year-round from 6:30am to 9pm for games and events knowing full well these lights will shine bright through living rooms, bedrooms, and animal habitats.
- Light pollution will impact the immediate neighbors and Chicago’s lakefront migratory bird pathway.
- Renting the field for extended hours will bring even more traffic, more roadway damage, and take up public parking. Additionally, more events bring more people, parties, noise, and nuisances.
Parker erodes the neighborhood’s quality of life
- Parker puts pedestrians at risk with their blocks-long rows of double-parked idling cars releasing emissions in a high foot-traffic area, resulting in poor visibility near crosswalks full of pre-school children, commuters, and joggers.
- Parker has been granted daily street closure privileges, removing public parking and creating traffic jams throughout the surrounding community.
- Parker students come from over 63 zip codes; less than 33% of Parker attendees live in the 43rd Ward. Parker commuters are destroying our roads and we are paying to fix them.
- Parker staff take up what little free street parking is left despite having two parking lots. This reduces access for visitors to park economically to visit the lakefront, Lincoln Park Zoo, the Conservatory, Grandmother's Garden, Clark street businesses, and playgrounds.
We are tired of Parker's WANTS being prioritized over community NEEDS.
Our community NEEDS:
- residents' eyes and ears on our streets
- shoppers in our local stores
- children in our public schools
- neighbors who contribute to the vibrancy of our community
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