Chicago spent a century filling in and expanding its Lake Michigan shoreline to create a recreational wonderland of harbors, parks and beaches known as the ”gem of the Midwest.”
Now the shoreline is threatened by record-high water levels and a rampaging lake, forcing city planners to think on a grand scale in the tradition of Daniel Burnham`s 1910 motto to ”make no little plans.”
Little plans will not stop a lake that seems to be intent on washing away the lakefront, according to experts who predict that Lake Michigan`s high waters could persist for 10 more years.
”I really didn`t know I would have to re-plan the lakefront in the next few years,” said Elizabeth Hollander, Chicago`s planning commissioner. ”It`s going to be one of the planning efforts we must do.”
The city planning department, the Chicago Park District, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a city task force, state agencies and citizen groups are at work in the effort that could change the face of Chicago`s lakefront for the first time in 30 years.
All solutions under consideration involve tradeoffs. The shore could be
”armored” with heavy boulders, but then sandy beaches could be a thing of the past. Seawalls could be raised to keep the lake from flooding parks, but those structures could block easy access to the water.
Offshore barrier islands would dampen the blow of storm waves and reduce erosion of Chicago`s shoreline, but these islands might interfere with lake currents and cause unforeseen ecological damage. The islands also could erode, and would have to be maintained. And they are expensive. By one estimate, a single offshore recreational island might cost $500 million.
Three of the five Great Lakes reached record-high levels this year as a result of heavy rains. Lake levels rise and fall over time, but in no predictable pattern because they are related to the weather. Record-low levels were considered a major problem on the Great Lakes 22 years ago, and army engineers were seeking ways to raise lake levels.
Lake Michigan reached its record peak in October, when it was 3 feet higher than normal for that month. Schemes to lower the lake by increasing water diversion into the Chicago River become popular in such times. But experts say this would result in only a 2 1/2-inch drop over 15 years, and could produce flooding along the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers.
Often lost in such drain-the-lakes schemes is the recognition that the Great Lakes are not mere puddles that can be tampered with easily. The largest body of fresh water in the world, they contain 65 trillion gallons of water, or 20 percent of the world`s surface fresh water.
”We are all confronted with rising lake levels faster and more dramatically than anybody anticipated, and it has overwhelming financial implications,” said Hollander.
By some accounts, just repairing erosion and storm damage along Chicago`s 30 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline could cost $200 million to $1 billion. City officials are hoping for federal assistance.
Speaking of the lakefront last week, Mayor Harold Washington said: ”When this area was developed, no one could predict that our beautiful, friendly Lake Michigan, our sparkling jewel, would someday turn against us so fero-
ciously.”
”Band-Aid” remedies will not work, the mayor insisted. ”We have to think in terms of the long run,” he said. ”We may see someday an offshore island which serves as a breakwater.”
Dreams of man-made recreation islands in the lake are not new. Mayor Edward Kelly in 1935 predicted that the 72-acre Northerly Island built for a horticultural exhibit during the Century of Progress Exposition in 1933-34 would become a ”wooded isle” of winter and summer sports and a convention center. Instead, it became a lakefront executive airport.
Rising lake levels might be ”a blessing,” said Ivar Vilcins of the Chicago planning department, because they are forcing Chicago to consider action that might match the resourcefulness of building an artificial lakefront.
”All of the lakefront parks are artificial,” said Vilcins, who estimates that 2,000 acres of Chicago`s shoreline is man-made, some of it dating before the 1871 Chicago fire.
Over the years the lakefront was filled in with rubble from the fire as well as sand dredged from the bottom of the lake, refuse and earth left over from digging the North Shore Channel and the Sanitary-Ship Canal in 1900, according to Vilcins.
”Almost all of that was done before 1940. We have not done anything major since 1956,” he said.
But thoughts of major undertakings are stirring again, as the shoreline disappears under the churning waves.
Walter Netsch, park board president, said he is considering damming four Chicago lakefront harbors, drawing down their water levels and opening them to small sailboats and fishermen. They are Diversey harbor, 59th Street harbor and the inner and outer harbors of Jackson Park.
The more than 1,000 boats in those harbors would be transferred to Burnham harbor.
Boaters do not favor the plan, and the Illinois Conservation Department says damming Diversey and Jackson Park harbors could jeopardize the state`s salmon-stocking program. Others contend that the harbors would turn into foul cesspools of stagant water.
Netsch said all these concerns can be overcome.
The park district is focusing on saving its 25 miles of shoreline, while the Chicago Planning Department is focusing on 5 miles of shoreline on the North and Southeast Sides where private property and dwellings are threatened. This includes the lakefront high-rises north of Hollywood Avenue, home to 20,000 people.
Though filling in the lakefront and building homes on the waterfront may have been flirting with ecological backlash, said Vilcins, ”we`re not ready to say places along Sheridan Road shouldn`t have been built, so we`ll just let them fall into the water as nature intended. We can`t do that.”
Some planners believe the Lake Michigan crisis offers a chance to remodel the lakefront in a way that serves the recreational needs of more Chicagoans. ”Lake Michigan is a dangerous place for small boaters,” said Larry Christmas, director of the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission.
”There just aren`t places for the small boats,” said Christmas. ”I think Walter Netsch has an idea that not only addresses the use of harbors by big boats along with high water, but confronts the issue of small boats. This ought to be a welcome opportunity.”
This also is seen by planners as a time to come to grips with the future of the whole lakefront.
The city leases Northerly Island from the park district to operate Meigs Field. This lease expires in 1996, offering a chance to review the best use of the city`s only artificial offshore ”island.”
Navy Pier at the foot of Grand Avenue is under consideration by the National Park Service as a cultural center extolling Chicago`s role in industrial development, the arts, urban design and Great Lakes ecology.
But for Lee Botts of the Lake Michigan Federation, it is a time for rededication to Chicago`s unique philosophy–dating to 1836–that the lakefront should be public grounds free of buildings, a tenet that is violated in many places, including Lake Point Tower and McCormick Place.
Lake Michigan has long been viewed as nature`s greatest gift to Chicago, which battled for 50 years to win the right to gain control over the lakefront. It included a historic fight with the Illinois Central Railroad, whose tracks skirted the lake. In 1919, the IC surrendered to Chicago its riparian rights and its lakefront landfills.
”Who are we kidding when we talk about protecting the Chicago lakefront?” Botts said. ”We`re losing it. Drive the whole lakefront and see how many places where you cannot see the lakefront from the drive.”
Lakefront planners, confronted with costs expected to run into many millions to preserve and protect the shoreline, must offer more public access, Botts said.
