It’s been clear for more than a year that the Park District’s plan to give a private school prime-time control over a corner of Lincoln Park is a bad deal for the public.
Under the contract’s terms—revealed in the lawsuit—the Park District will kick in as much as $250,000 to install lights for the new soccer field. It will also keep the field in “broom clean condition” while “maintaining, repairing and replacing the landscaping, fencing and other related improvements.” During the December-through-February off-season, parks workers will “protect it from the elements.” Anything else? Well, district officials also have to bring Gatorade and pretzels for the Latin kids after their games. (OK, I’m just kidding about that part.)
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Mitchell also wrote that Latin would wind up paying the district more than $222 per hour for use of the field. “That makes this location the priciest within the [park] system, and far from the sweetheart deal our critics have claimed.”
Over the last few months Mitchell has also responded to criticism that the Latin deal would shut out local public schools—Manierre, Franklin, Jenner, Schiller, Newberry, and Lincoln Park High, just to name a few—by insisting that they would have a chance to use it. But Park District documents included in the suit show that he was singing a different tune when the board ratified the deal in 2006, predicting the field would be a moneymaker for the district because it could be leased out to the Chicago Social Club, a recreational league for young professionals, for nighttime games ending at ten o’clock. So public school kids could play on the field either for the last hour the park was open, before school, Sundays, or during the week over the summer. That or they could transfer to Latin. And that’s not even getting to the question of when any other member of the public could use the field.
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