Updating Grant Park

By Kevin Robinson in News on Nov 19, 2009 8:00PM

No sooner had the Chicago Park District made news for considering layoffs and fee increases to balance it's nearly $400 million budget than it made news again, this time for asking the park board to greenlight a $4.2 million project to redesign 25 acres of the north end of Grant Park, from Millennium Park to Lake Shore Drive. The project involves hiring New York-based landscape architects Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Inc. Gia Biagi, the district's planning and development director, told the Sun-Times that Valkenburgh was chosen because of the firm's extensive work on urban landscapes.

$4.2 million isn't enough to close the projected $23 million gap in next year's budget, and though it's just 1 percent of the district's annual budget, it's still no small amount, making up 18 percent of that budget gap. And while it may be hard to argue with planning for the future of the city's front lawn, spending that kind of money on the design alone, at a time when the park district is looking at cutting staff in the parks and raising summer day camp costs, park facility rental fees, and memberships at fitness centers in the neighborhoods, seems like a misallocation of priorities.