For four years, the Chicago Park District’s biggest critic and its biggest bureaucrat have stood in the same corner on dozens of issues.
Erma Tranter, executive director of Friends of the Parks, even greeted Forrest Claypool’s appointment in 1993 as district superintendent with comments lauding his “reform-minded” zeal.
Now, she likens Claypool to the district’s controversial Supt. Edmund Kelly, who from 1973 to 1986 often was accused of running the district like a “feudal lord.”
And instead of serving Claypool adulation on a silver platter, she served him with a lawsuit last week in U.S. District Court, alleging that he has become more secretive even than Kelly about the way the district conducts business.
“It’s not the policy we object to. It’s the process,” Tranter said.
In recent weeks, Friends of the Parks has complained that Claypool has steamrolled the demolition of historic buildings along the lakefront, including the vacant Lincoln Park Gun Club at Diversey Harbor and, in February, the demolition of the gun club at the 91-year-old South Shore Cultural Center.
The group’s lawsuit now is taking on Claypool’s $35 million harbor renovation plans, contending that the district has violated the Lake Michigan and Chicago Lakefront Protection Ordinance by not seeking prior approval from the Chicago Plan Commission.
“If it’s a good plan, it would withstand the light of day,” Tranter said.
Claypool said the suit is more about protecting Tranter’s organization than protecting the lakefront.
“She just needs an issue to keep memberships and dues coming in,” said Claypool, who called the suit “frivolous.”
“They used to be friends of the parks; now they are friends of bureaucrats and lawyers,” Claypool said. “They are not raising park issues; they are raising legal, bureaucratic issues.”
The suit is only the second filed by Friends of the Parks in its 22-year history, making it all the more surprising that it came against Claypool, who has an impressive record on environmental issues.
He has planted a record number of trees–7,000 in 1997 and 6,600 in 1996.
He has increased flower gardens threefold.
He has added 110 green acres to the parks in the last three years, 30 acres alone along the lakefront.
He has cut the district payroll from 4,103 full-time and part-time employees in 1993 to 3,307, a reduction of almost 20 percent.
He is working with city schools to turn asphalt playgrounds into green spaces at the rate of 25 per year.
He has not called for a property-tax increase during the first four years of his tenure–and the district, which still has the biggest park budget in the nation at $300.9 million, reportedly won’t request an increase this year either.
And for a man whom some call “arrogant,” Claypool drives himself to work. His predecessors were chauffeur-driven.
“He is green; the mayor’s green,” Tranter concedes. “Overall, there’s been progress.
“But we are not a rubber-stamp anything. We are always independent. We will tell him when he’s doing good, and we will tell him when he’s doing wrong.
“On the harbor renovation, on the gun club demolition, on lack of public input, he’s wrong. The Park District does not need another Ed Kelly.”
Friends of the Park isn’t the only group claiming to be shut out.
“If there’s ever been a dictator in the world–his name is Forrest Claypool,” said Ald. Robert Shaw (9th).
“He doesn’t want people in the community to have input. He will usually put you off on a subordinate. Mr. Claypool just won’t listen. Maybe we need to buy him a hearing aid,” Shaw said.
Shaw complained that the Park District took more than a year to install basketball hoops in Palmer Park on the Far South Side and that Claypool didn’t return phone calls explaining the delay.
“We’ve been trying to get new sand and dirt for the Little League teams for years–still hasn’t come,” Shaw said. “The drainage system doesn’t work–when it rains the park looks like a lake. And the trees need pruning.”
Kelly’s City Hall ties were well-known, but the Park District under Claypool has made it clear that it is not a department of city government, a posture that has rankled Shaw and other aldermen.
Shaw said it is not a matter of aldermanic prerogative.
“When Mr. Claypool ignores me, he’s ignoring the people,” Shaw said. “After all, I’m the elected representative of the people.”
Claypool said he’s not ignoring anyone.
“We’ve had 57 public meetings on the harbor renovations,” Claypool said. “Do we need 58, instead of 57?”
Claypool said putting the project before the Plan Commission could delay the project another year and cost the taxpayers more money. The improvements are financed by boater fees.
Ald. Mary Ann Smith (48th), chairman of the City Council’s Parks Committee, said she is satisfied with the public outreach, and she even ran meetings on harbor improvements herself.
The renovations of seven of the city’s nine harbors are well along, including construction of 3,000 new floating slips and improvements to landscaping, fence replacement, public access docks, lighting and renovated parking areas
“If you want to find a problem in a system this large, you can,” Claypool said. “That Friends of the Parks is focused on such narrow technical issues, I think that’s a compliment to the Park District.”
