What's wrong with this picture?

The above picture, looking north from 53rd Street, is what's planned for Promontory Point, and indeed the entire Chicago Lakefront from Hollywood to 67th Street, if we don't stop it.

The Promontory Point has been a recreational and spiritual oasis for the Hyde Park-Kenwood community for over 60 years. A gorgeous seawall built of weathered limestone blocks joins the beauty of Lake Michigan to Alfred Caldwell's prairie school landscape. Generations have enjoyed lake swimming, walking, biking, picnicking, reading and much more in a park unequaled by any other in Chicago.

This unique park—beautiful, useful and safe—is threatened by the Chicago Park District's intention to replace the limestone seawall with a revetment made of steel and concrete, as they have already done between 51st Street and 53rd Street in the above picture.

Community shock and outrage over the original design proposal drove the Park District back to the drawing board. Sadly, their revisions have been grossly inadequate and unsatisfactory.

The Park District continues to insist that a concrete-and-steel structure is cheapest and best suited for harsh wave and weather conditions. But the Army Corps of Engineers' own manual on shoreline protection contradicts them point by point:

• The engineering manual states that "the [shore protection] structure should be designed to be aesthetically pleasing" and specifies, "The appearance of a structure in a heavily used urban park is more critical than a structure in an industrial area or isolated setting."

• Where it is available, quarrystone "makes the most reliable and economical revetments," according to the Army Corps; concrete "is usually more expensive" than quarrystone.

• Special concrete mixes designed to withstand heavy wave action are still subject to damage by wave-carried ice and debris. Concrete "should not generally be used in areas where such damage is likely to occur."

• Concrete structures are "subject to premature failure" due to their rigidity, while quarrystone designs "have reserve strength" due to their relative flexibility.
  

• Rough-surface quarrystone in a step design has much less wave run-up and overflow than the vertical steel walls proposed by the Park District—and thus require less massive structures. Exaggerated wave estimates—used to justify unnecessarily massive concrete structures—have not been corrected.

• Park District assertions that limestone isn't available turn out to be false. In fact the Army Corps is buying limestone from Indiana quarries for use on other Great Lakes projects. The Illinois Department of Transportation recently purchased a large quantity of these same limestone blocks for landscaping along the Stevenson Expressway.

The completed portion of the revetment north of 53rd Street, seen above, stands as grim testimony to the Park District's lack of vision. It's a wasteland—ugly, sterile, barren. It's empty—no one goes there, except pigeons. The empty picture above was taken on the same midsummer day, minutes apart, from the picture on the home page crowded with people. Concrete and steel can never replace the beauty and joy of the Point's limestone.

The current Park District plan is a disaster in its aesthetics, its engineering, and its economics. This project should not be started until the Park District creates a design which preserves—rather than destroys—the beauty and usefulness of the Point.

Please write, call, or e-mail the Mayor, the Park District, and the Alderman and urge them to save the Point by suspending the current construction plan.

And then, after we save The Point, we'll need to start work towards ripping out the eyesore pictured above and replacing it with something more appropriate.

Click here to see a list of addresses to write to.

FREE BUMPER STICKER! We'll send you the fashionable and popular "SAVE THE POINT" bumper sticker shown below, if you agree to actually put it on your car. Send your name and postal address to info@savethepoint.org