So it died in 2003, and when it was resurrected without any community involvement in October of 2006 no one had a clue at first. I was really taken aback—I only saw it because we saw the agenda on a Tuesday for a Park District meeting on Wednesday.
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It resulted in a new group being formed to litigate, and they got a judge who saw this as a public land deal that was bad for the public. So that’s a case that shows that the Park District has to really rethink this kind of public-private partnership where you give public land to benefit private institutions. It’s wrong, and it’s been declared wrong by the courts.
The museum did agree to put more of the new building underground.
It makes sense for the Park District to look for these partnerships, but to discern between those they should be working toward and those they shouldn’t even have a discussion about. I don’t see in their budget that they get a whole lot of private grants, and I think that’s something they could grow. [Superintendent] Tim Mitchell has been looking to find state support. And they are looking for aldermanic money—to say, “The park advisory council wants a new playground, and you, alderman, need to kick in for it [out of your menu budget].” And what we’ve been saying is that the district needs to push for its share of TIF money—they should be getting 7 percent of it.
Is there anything the Park District has been doing well?
