Michael Rivers, a worker with the Chicago Park District, picks up trash on the playground at Memorial Park on West 73 Street. (William DeShazer, Chicago Tribune / May 13, 2010)
34th Place Notes: Interesting Article. Not completely sold on the inference that the Southside is neglected as the article hints. What the North side has that the South side needs is the involvement by the residents in the neighborhoods.
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North Side playlots get more money, upgrades
Map reveals fewer renovations on South and West sides
Lobbying By Erika Slife and Lolly Bowean, Tribune reporters
May 16, 2010
The playground across from Kendra Snow's Englewood home is littered with broken liquor bottles, potato chip bags and other trash.
The blue paint on the jungle gym is peeling, and its drawbridge is rusted. On a recent afternoon, a group of men congregated near the fenced-in swing set and drank beer as music blared from their car. On the basketball court, where a torn net dangles from a hoop, teenagers scuffled.
It's no wonder Snow, 34, refuses to take her five children to Memorial Playlot Park at 73rd Street and Vincennes Avenue.
"The swings are broke, and there's nothing for the kids to do because everything is tore up," she said. "It's just tore up and raggedy."
In Chicago, the quality of a play lot depends on the community where it's located. And in communities such as Snow's, where busy roads and gang boundaries confine children to a small radius of their homes, playgrounds may be the only recreational outlet where kids run free.
For the last five years, the Chicago Park District has been aggressively renovating playgrounds across the city with the goal of modernizing all 518 play lots. But a Park District map denoting every renovation over the last decade shows the majority occurred on the North Side.
Officials say the reason for the disparity is because it has been easier to partner financially with city, state and civic leaders on the North Side to renovate playgrounds. Park District records show that of the $8.5 million aldermen contributed to playground projects since 2003, only $1.1 million came from South Side aldermen — and $925,000 of that from two lawmakers: Aldermen Virginia Rugai, 19th, and Michael Zalewski, 23rd. Each alderman is given city funds to support projects in his or her ward.
Ald. Freddrenna Lyle, 6th, whose ward contains the decrepit Memorial Playlot, said she was not surprised by conditions there.
"Every year, I go through this war with the Park District," Lyle said. "I will go through and show them all the programs available in other communities and meet with them, and they will give you 9,000 reasons why the programs are not available here."
Park District officials say playground records don't show a complete picture of how lawmakers contribute to the district because some elected officials donate money for a new field house or other park amenities. General Superintendent Timothy Mitchell said that for its part, "the Park District spends its money evenly across the board."
"They may get more on the North Side, but each one of those state senators, state representatives and city aldermen (in other parts of the city) could do the same thing," he said.
Officials said financial partnerships with neighborhood groups, chambers of commerce and nonprofit foundations have enabled the district to modernize a larger number of playgrounds than ever before — up to 25 a year, compared with five annual renovations just five or six years ago. In the last decade, 175 playgrounds have been renovated, park officials said, with the goal of meeting the highest environmental and disabled-accessible standards.
But nearly 30 years after the Park District signed a federal consent decree to spend millions more in minority neighborhoods, activists, parents and political leaders on the South and West sides said they feel left out.
"Some of these neighborhoods have literally nothing. Even the school may have just (have) a big paved-over space with nothing to play on," said Deborah Puntenney, associate director of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute at Northwestern University. "It's a real concern there in the inner city to have safe, quality places for kids to play."
Dolores Castaneda, an activist in Little Village, said she began pressing city and Park District officials to rebuild a playground in her neighborhood nearly five years ago, after she saw Mitchell on TV showing off a new park on the North Side.
"I wondered, 'Why don't we have anything like that in my community?'" Castaneda said. So she began a letter-writing campaign.
"I sent letters to people because, for so many years, I was asking to fix the park, and they're always telling me we don't have money right now," she said.
Experts note that playgrounds are arenas where children learn social skills and coordination, build muscle and stamina and are a place for kids to blow off steam from the pressures of school or home life.
When playgrounds fall into neglect, they become magnets for loiterers, drug users or gangs, repelling families with kids who might have otherwise played there.
On sunny afternoons, Snow, a single mother in Englewood, gathers up her children, and they'll ride the bus a half-hour south to Tuley Park, 90th Street and King Drive, a place she calls a "real playground."
"Having five kids, I can't take them to places that will cost me every time," Snow said. "I do know (that) playing for kids is what makes them learn and grow. I grew up in this area, and years ago (Memorial Park) was OK. Now it's a hangout for drug dealers."
At 4, her son Torrin doesn't like to visit Memorial Park.
"This park ugly," he said when he visited on a recent morning. "I don't want (to) go to it."
In Little Village, where Castaneda successfully lobbied for a new Miami Playlot Park, kids on a recent evening swarmed the state-of-the-art jungle gym that was installed last summer and chased one another on the rubber surface.
"Before, there was nowhere to play, so the children would play basketball in the alley and run through (the spray of) fire hydrants," Castaneda said. "Here, it's the only place children can be free and enjoy life. They're not going downtown to Millennium Park or the museums (for recreation). They're coming here."
Less than a mile away on Trumbull Avenue, Limas Playground Park, which hasn't been updated in nearly 20 years, was practically deserted. A lone boy swung on the swings, while a woman watching him from a nearby bench chatted on her phone.
The Park District receives dozens of requests every year for playground renovations, officials said. The requests are weighed against the age of the playground, a consideration of geography — such as are people moving to the area — and possible financial partnerships, said Gia Biagi, the Park District's director of planning and development.
One of the biggest city contributors over the years has been Ald. Mary Ann Smith, 48th, who has contributed an estimated $14 million to parks in her North Side ward since 1989. She said one of the challenges of her 1.2-square-mile ward is that it's narrow, long and densely developed.
"Community identity is linked to many things … parks are very much a part of that," Smith said. "Parks can be a negative if they're in bad shape and full of crime … or they can be really effective at community building, enhancing all kinds of activities."
Some South Side and West Side aldermen, with sprawling wards and varied needs, can't help but be jealous of the money their colleagues can afford to spend on parks.
"Our wards are so much larger geographically, so I have to spend my (discretionary) money every year on sidewalks and streets. And I have less money to spend on parks," Lyle said.
