The activists who chased the skeet shooters out of Lincoln Park are finding it can be a lot easier to get rid of something you don’t like than to replace it with something you do.
No sense second-guessing the Chicago Park District’s 1991 decision to evict the old Lincoln Park Gun Club from its two-story clubhouse overlooking Lake Michigan east of Diversey Harbor. The constant popping of 12-gauges was a nuisance, no question. But now that the district has spent more than $1 million cleaning up and relandscaping the site (which may or may not have been contaminated by the residue of clay pigeons), the park board and the activists seem to have run out of ideas on what to do with the 76-year-old structure.
Two attempts to keep the building alive as a “community center,” complete with snack bar and bicycle repair station, failed to click. The civic group and the health club involved in those ventures probably underestimated the impact of removing the club’s parking lot and its access ramp to Lake Shore Drive. All that solitude proved bad for business.
Now Park District Supt. Forrest Claypool wants to knock the old club down, grass it over and call it a scenic overlook. It is, indeed, a stunning location–not a bad site for a few park benches and some appropriate statuary. Such an outcome, no doubt, would delight the enviro-activists. For them, the old clubhouse still must evoke distasteful memories of middle-aged men with shotguns. (Watch for the greens’ next offensive against wrongful use of the public’s parks by power boaters, smelt fishermen, golfers and whoever else doesn’t share their recreational sensibilities.)
As for the gun club, it’s too bad an inventive tenant can’t be found to keep the place open as a way station for the 8,000 cyclists, rollerbladers and joggers who pass by on a typical summer’s day. In wintertime, how about a warming house for cross-country skiers?
The lakefront is for everyone, to be sure. But the probable demise of this old building just gives credence to the old saw: That which belongs to everyone belongs to no one.
