Preserving Public Land Voices from Illinois'
Land Preservation Front Protecting Land for Cities
Illinois Parks & Recreation * May/June 1996 * 25 communities. A 1994 report by the Trust for Public Land, "Healing America's Cities," summarizes recent evidence that parks and recreational programs are essential to the health and integrity of urban communities. Parks and greenspaces modulate the stress of urban living and offer a venue for health-promoting exercise. Park-based recreational programs have been shown to promote self-esteem and community stability while reducing such stubborn problems as delinquency and crime. In one Philadelphia precinct, for example, rates of burglary and theft plummeted 90 percent after police officers and volunteers cleared vacant lots and planted community gardens. In Phoenix, juvenile crime fell as much as 55 percent during those summers when basketball courts and other recreational facilities were open until 2:00 a.m. In Port Myers, Florida, juvenile arrests dropped 28 percent after a new recreation center was constructed in a low income area and a new program launched to offer recreation and academic support to young adolescents. Such findings support the common sense notion that kids are less likely to throw stones if they've got basketballs or baseballs to throw around. This was one conclusion of a 1992 Carnegie Corporation report, "A Matter of Time—Risk and Opportunity in the Nonschool Hours." When researchers asked adolescents what they wanted most in nonschool hours, safe parks and recreation centers topped the list. Unfortunately, the very urban young people most in need of parks are underserved by them. While Chicago is justly proud of its 7,400 acres of parks, these acres are far from evenly distributed. According to a 1990 Chicago Park District report, parkland near downtown, where the large lakefront parks are located, totals more than 41 acres for each thousand residents. On the densely settled west side, each thousand residents are served by only half an acre of park land. In Chicago, as in other cities across Illinois and the nation, it is essential to secure more parks and recreational opportunities for core city residents. This won't be easy. Urban land is expensive, and open parcels are rare. But opportunities do arise, and ways can be found to leverage scarce public funds. In 1991, the Chicago Park District—with help from the Trust for Public Land—snapped up 13 acres, a former railway property, as an addition to Senka Park on the city's crowded southeast side. It was the city's first investment in neighborhood park land in ten years. Chicago has now commissioned a new park plan, due out this spring. The plan will examine ways to create parks and increase opportunities for recreation. If the experience of other cities is any guide, potential new parkland might include abandoned railway lines for hiking and hiking trails, vacant lots for community gardens, or former factory sites, especially along our heavily urbanized rivers. An alliance of government and volunteer groups is already at work creating recreational access along the Chicago River. In the meantime, Chicago Park District Superintendent Forrest Claypool has launched the district's new Neighborhood First Program, to increase community participation in parks planning. This work is crucial. Demographers tell us that by the year 2000, 80 percent of American's will be living in urban areas. The health of American cities is essential to the nation's future. In turn, nothing is as essential to the health and stability of cities as are parks, recreation programs and open space. 26 * Illinois Parks & Recreation * May/June 1996 Open space is just as important to communities and neighborhoods as other infrastructure such as roads and sewers. Open space doesn't include just active recreational parks, but passive areas such as prairies and wetlands, often linked by greenways. This mixing of active with passive forms a broad scope of diverse open space uses that creates variety for northeastern Illinois, the primary population served by the Corporation for Open Lands (CorLands)—the private, nonprofit acquisition affiliate of Openlands Project. CorLands deals with the nitty-gritty of land preservation—putting the deal together and getting the land transferred to a permanent open space manager such as a park district. But before a decision to purchase a parcel is made, many issues need to be addressed. Determining which preservation goals are priorities and how limited funding should be allocated are challenging issues facing land preservation efforts in northeastern Illinois. Many times, developers are concerned that preservationists want to preserve all the available land left in northeastern Illinois. But, is that a true and realistic assessment considering the history of land preservation in the area? In the six-county metropolitan region of Chicago, just over 8 acres out of every 100 acres are permanently preserved as open space. This includes all local, county and state open space holdings. Looking at these numbers in reverse, that means 92 percent of all lands have been or could be developed. Should the development community worry that there won't be land left to meet the market for development? Not for many years to come, if ever. Should more land be preserved? A resounding yes! There are many quality natural areas, macrosite and greenway opportunities in the region. Can either the development or preservation community afford to buy the land that is left? A good question. Availability of funding is a significant factor in preserving land in northeastern Illinois. Many park districts are faced with paying $50,000 to $100,000 per acre for park land. This is especially true in densely populated suburban and urban areas where vacant land for parks and open space as well as development is at a premium. Even sections of what was once "rural" Will and Lake counties are facing $30,000 per acre prices. For-
Meeting Preservation
Challenges in
Northeastern Illinois Illinois Parks & Recreation * May/June 1996 * 27 est preserve districts, which traditionally have been major acquirers of land through bond issues, are routinely buying land at $15,000 to $20,000 per acre. Just how much park land can be bought for a million dollars today? Probably 50 to 60 acres in semi-rural areas, 10 to 15 acres in high growth suburban areas. Even if northeastern Illinois had $1 billion to spend on open space acquisitions, that would probably buy about 50,000 acres or slightly more than 2% of the land total in the metropolitan region. Given these sobering statistics, innovative and non-traditional acquisition techniques that maximize available dollars need to become the norm rather than the exception. With continuing growth and redistribution of the population in northeastern Illinois, open space preservation needs to keep pace with those changes. Increasing the funding levels of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources OSLAD and Bicycle Path grant programs should be a priority. However, with tax caps in place, high land values, shrinking budgets and open space referendums difficult to pass, local governments must be diligent in exploring alternative means to preserve land. Leveraging local dollars with state grant programs, forging partnerships with local governments, dedicating conservation easements where appropriate, and obtaining surplus land from federal sources are all examples of techniques that should be considered to increase open space holdings. Can these techniques work? Just consider: Northeastern Illinois has a strong economy and continues to prosper. To remain strong, we must intensify our pursuit of quality open space for recreation and habitat protection. The Northeastern Illinois Greenways Plan, developed by Openlands Project and Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission, provides a framework for the future. The plan proposes an integrated open space system that links small neighborhood parks to large "macrosites" through a network of 1,000 miles of trails and greenways. This is our region's blueprint for the future. It calls for imagination, tenacity and hard work to carry it through. The challenge is there. Now we need to meet it. The Corporation for Open Lands (CorLands) the land acquisition affiliate of Openlands Project, has been in the business of preserving land for more than 18 years. Working primarily with park and forest preserve districts in northeastern Illinois, CorLands has managed to preserve more than 5,000 acres valued in excess of $50,000,000. Being a private nonprofit, CorLands brings a great deal of flexibility in structuring land transactions. Given scarce resources, flexibility will become a key component to preserving land in the '90s and beyond. 28 * Illinois Parks & Recreation * May/June 1996 The Illinois Department of Natural Resources (and its predecessor, the Department of Conservation) is the state of Illinois' natural resource conservation and outdoor recreation provision agency. In this role, the Department protects land and water, often through purchase. The Department's critics, such as the Illinois Farm Bureau, sometimes ask, how much [land purchased] is enough? Although this question might appear to have a quantitative answer, an exact number has eluded us to date. Instead, the answers given for this question primarily reflect the answerer's personal values. To some, the Department already has land that we are "not even using." This belief ignores the fact that most Department areas were acquired so that they would not be "used" but kept in or restored to their natural state. Others worry about maintaining populations of native plants and animals, finding close-to-home recreation opportunities for their families or experiencing some visual relief in a cityscape or agricultural landscape. There is some data that can lend perspective to this debate. One figure commonly cited is Illinois' ranking of 48th among the 50 states in the area of public recreation land per capita. While Illinois is certainly not comparable to most large western states with low populations and large federal land holdings, we don't seem to compare well even with other urbanized states. It is also worth noting that most of Illinois' public land is in southern Illinois while two-thirds of our population lives in northeastern Illinois. The evolution and current status of Illinois' recreation estate is also instructive. The Department manages more than 200 staffed sites throughout Illinois. Some of these sites are clearly of major statewide significance—Starved Rock, Pere Marquette, Illinois Beach, Mississippi Palisades—Illinois' "crown jewels." Other sites such as Tri-County State Park have much less natural resource significance but by virtue of their size and location have great potential to satisfy outdoor recreation needs. Most sites are somewhere in between with some resource significance and providing a variety of outdoor recreation opportunities. Why are there so many Department sites? One reason is
How Much
Is Enough? Illinois Parks & Recreation * May/June 1996 * 29 that in only 18 of Illinois' 102 counties have the voters established county-level forest preserve and conservation districts. Illinois' justifiably envied park districts are concentrated in northeastern Illinois and other major urban areas. For much of Illinois, the Department has become the regional or local recreation provider by default. Many state sites have been added to the system by local citizens acting through their representatives in the Illinois General Assembly. Some of the debate over "how much is enough" seems to center on perceptions about how the Department acquires and protects land. Some view the Department as over-aggressive, all too eager to use its eminent domain authority to condemn and evict landowners and pay below value prices. In fact, the Department's acquisition activity peaked in the '70s and has generally diminished thereafter (the exception being a few years where large, single willing owner acquisitions occurred). In recent years eminent domain has been exercised for only about 3 percent of the parcels obtained. The typical Department acquisition occurs through negotiation with willing sellers based on fair-market values determined by independent appraisers. Relocation benefits are provided and special landowner interests such as life estates and partial takings are often negotiated. In recent years Department acquisitions have been increasingly "opportunity-driven;" that is, where single owners, often corporate, willingly divest large holdings such as Site M or Lowden-Miller State Forest. Other similar special opportunities that the Department has helped pursue have been keeping the Joliet Arsenal and Savanna Army Depot in public ownership for conservation purposes. At the same time, land protection has been pursued with more options for the landowners such as easements and management agreements. In fact, the major land protection initiative of the '90s—Conservation 2000—relies totally on voluntary measures with condemnation legislatively prohibited. These trends are likely to continue. Although eminent domain is seldom used and must be approved by the Governor, it remains an important tool, used as a last resort to complete initiatives. It is used only after much deliberation and, in an era of public suspicion of government, its use, as well as land acquisition in general, must be justified to the public. The Department, and other agencies, are well aware of this sentiment and routinely address local issues such as impact on the economy and tax base and consequences of new visitors to an area. The Department tries to be sensitive to prevailing attitudes and flexible and creative in its use of techniques for land protection. We welcome debate with our critics and are fully aware of how deeply held their values are. We hope that they are equally aware of how strongly many of their fellow citizens feel about natural resource conservation and enjoyment of the outdoors. Illinois' future will, to a great extent, depend on the quality of its environment and the life it supports. Only by protecting the natural resources of our state can we ensure that Illinois will be a place where people want to live, work, and visit. 30 * Illinois Parks & Recreation * May/June 1996 |
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