By now you’ve probably heard a thing or two about the showdown between Pilsen residents and Chicago Public School officials over the field house on the playground at Whittier elementary school.
But there’s a curious and complicated backstory that’s so far gone unreported, involving 25th Ward alderman Danny Solis, congressman Luis Gutierrez, and officials from Cristo Rey Jesuit High School at 1852 W. 22nd Place.
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To Cristo Rey officials, it was a win-win situation—they’d oversee construction, paying for the project with a mix of private donations and whatever money they could raise from the feds and state. “We would use it for practices after school,” says Peter Beale-DelVecchio, development director at Cristo Rey. “During the day, Whittier could use it and on weekends it could be a community field.”
Moreover, the soccer field would force the demolition of the old field house, which had become something of a community center, where folks gathered for meetings, GED classes, and activities like sewing clubs. “They made it clear to us that they did not want the field house demolished,” says Beale-DelVecchio. “They told us their primary goal was to have a library and a meeting room. We respected that. We said, fine—we’re not here to trump your priorities.”
By February, however, it seemed clear to Cristo Rey that Whittier officials, who hadn’t set up another meeting, were still opposed to the soccer field. “As far as we were concerned, it was dead,” says Beale-DelVecchio. Cristo Rey’s soccer teams currently practice in Harrison Park and play their home games at a nearby YMCA.
Del Valle tells me he never directed parents to Gutierrez’s earmark request list: “The parents came to me to seek my support and they told me what was on Luis’s website.”
The protesters don’t buy that either. “There’s too many coincidences,” says Santos.
