By Ben Joravsky
With the trees scheduled to be uprooted in the spring, the mayor’s the only remaining hope. “Mayor Daley says he loves trees–well, we need him now,” says Joe Arnold, an Albany Park resident. “Here we are in the middle of the quarantined area and they want to tear down these beautiful three-story trees for Astroturf. They want to take away the community’s park. I can’t believe the mayor will let this happen.”
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The park, informally known as West River Park, runs from Ainslie to Carmen between the Chicago River and Albany. It’s the main piece of greenery for a congested community of apartment buildings, two-flats, and single-family homes. But a few months ago officials from the Park District, the Board of Education, and North Park University got together and decided it would be best for everyone if the park were replaced with a soccer field. As they saw it, North Park needed and deserved a new soccer field, since the old one at Bryn Mawr and Kedzie had been taken over by the Board of Education to be the site of a new magnet high school. There’s plenty of nearby park space to play soccer in, but North Park wanted a state-of-the-art field with easy-to-maintain turf, bleachers for fans, and a broadcasting booth.
By the end of October several residents, led by Passey and Jennifer Plotkin, were organizing. “I’m new to the area, so I was surprised at the way things are done,” says Plotkin. “I thought if you have questions, call the city and they will respond. Boy, was I wrong. It took forever for Mr. Mell or anyone at the Park District to even call me back. I finally got ahold of Mell on October 19 and told him we wanted to have a neighborhood meeting. He said, ‘Don’t worry. Whatever the neighborhood wants, I want.’ I said, ‘We want to make sure we at least get the facts right. We’d like to see a model.’ He said, ‘Oh, that’s exactly what I want, Jennifer. I’ll be at your meeting and I’ll bring a model.’”
Worse, she says, it seemed as though Mell was starting to take her opposition the wrong way: “We met with Mell on October 26 at his office,” says Plotkin. “I talked for about 30 seconds and he broke in and said, ‘Your group threw my men out of your meeting.’ I said, ‘We had invited you, not them. And they didn’t know anything.’ I said our major goal was to find an alternative location and he said, ‘Sure, I will help you.’”
And how many residents support the soccer field? “I understand [Mell] came up with a letter of support,” says Clark. “I don’t understand if it’s from an individual or an organization. But I heard there was a letter of support.”
