To the editor:
This message is to voice my strong opposition to the proposed running track at Lincoln Park’s south field area.
I am an avid runner, but the addition of a running track so close to apartments and homes in south Lincoln Park will only add to the already intrusive activities in that area.
I am a 30 year resident of North Dearborn Street. In recent years, activities at the Chicago Historical Society, Lincoln Park Zoo and the South Field have increasingly intruded on the surrounding community in a most unwelcome way. Loud music, bright lights, and commercial uses of the south Lincoln Park have become commonplace and greatly diminish the otherwise attractive features of the area.
Latin School’s partnership in the track means that there will be numerous organized competitive running events against other schools, which, in turn will generate more congestion and, with the inevitable speakers at such events, more unwanted noise carrying across the open fields of the Park into nearby apartments. And, as occurs at the south field baseball diamonds now, the track will undoubtedly be another source of year-round bright stadium lights shining directly into many surrounding apartments and homes until late in the evening, every evening of the year.
It seems that every year the Park District comes up with another scheme to add to the already overburdened south Lincoln Park and to the noise and lights that the neighborhood residents are forced to endure. We want less of that, not more.
I urge the Chicago Park District to abandon this latest proposal for a running track and redirect its energies to improving the natural landscape of south Lincoln Park.
Thank you.
David K. Sullivan
Lincoln Park
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