Preservationists want to turn Chicago’s lakefront into a National Park

In response to multiple attempts over the past decade to build private facilities on Chicago’s protected lakefront, nonprofit advocacy group Preservation Chicago says it hopes to pursue a National Park designation for the city’s waterfront and accompanying parks to protect them from development.

“It seems like every few years we have to go through these costly battles to keep Chicago’s lakefront and lakefront parks forever open, clear, and free,” Ward Miller, executive director of Preservation Chicago, told Curbed Chicago—evoking the wording of the Public Trust Doctrine, which protects the lakefront from commercial uses. “This [proposal] takes local politics out the equation.”

Miller pointed to recent controversies including the Chicago Children’s Museum unsuccessful plan to move into Grant Park 2011, the 2016 fight that ultimately scuttled the Lucas Museum, and the current legal challenge facing the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park.

The attempts to give away public open space to private institutions is based on a flawed idea that many of Chicago’s current museums are in—or appear to be in—parks, according to Miller. “There’s never been a situation where a new building has been built on parkland,” said the preservationist. “For example, Chicago’s Museum Campus began on former railroad property, and the parkland grew up around it.”

In addition to ensuring that politically-backed private developments don’t infringe on Chicago’s public lakefront, Preservation Chicago believes that national park status would allow the city and Park District to re-focus resources on other parts of the city.

“Chicago’s lakefront and its parks are not well kept as they could be and often suffer from deferred maintenance,” said Miller. “This proposal could lift a substantial financial burden off the city to be invested in existing or new neighborhood parks.” Federal jurisdiction over the lakeshore could also support the creation of waterfront parkland in places like DuSable Park or the Southworks site, added Miller.

The establishment of a new national park along Lake Michigan is not without precedent. Just this past February, the nearby Indiana Dunes Lakeshore became the Indiana Dunes National Park.

The Chicago proposal will require backing from both city and congressional officials. “Right now we’re sowing a seed,” explained Miller. “We’re reaching out to our representatives and hoping the new mayoral administration will see this as a good idea to carry forth.”

Miller stressed that Preservation Chicago is not part of the lawsuit against the Obama Presidential Center and that his organization “welcomes” the center in Chicago—just not on the historic public landscape designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. “If [the Obama Foundation] picked a private lot at the University of Chicago, it would probably be open by now.”

Obama Foundation