From a wintry deep freeze to the opening of a new pool, 2014 was another year of ups, downs and contrasts in Park Ridge.
While the city continued its financial struggles as a result of a failed Uptown development, philanthropy remained ever-present, from the donation of headstones to mark a murdered family’s unmarked graves to Maine South High School students’ $19,400 check to an animal shelter trying to establish a new home.
New businesses opened, long-time businesses closed. And, as always, plans for the future were painted.
The following is a look at five of the top stories that helped shape the last 12 months in Park Ridge.
Brawl at Hinkley Park
A cell phone video of a man being pulled to the ground, kicked and punched while a crowd of screaming teens looked on rocked the community in July.
The melee was an outgrowth of what Police Department officials had just described weeks earlier as problems with large groups of teens congregating in Uptown. As many as 200 youth were gathered at Hinkley Park on the night of July 12, the last night of the Taste of Park Ridge food festival, which was happening just around the corner from the park.
According to Park Ridge police, an argument over fireworks set off in the park led to a clash between a 48-year-old parent and a group of teen boys just before 10 p.m.
The only person to call 911 that night to report the beating was the alleged victim himself, though other emergency calls from the park that night indicated at least two boys claimed to have seen someone fire a gun in the park. Police called these reports unfounded.
In all, two 18-year-olds and one 16-year-old were charged with felony aggravated battery and mob connection in connection with the alleged beating of the man. A fourth boy, age 16, was charged with mob action and assault in August.
And the criminal case continues. The two adults charged are scheduled to be back in court on Jan. 12.
The disturbance led to community discussions about parental responsibility and why police officers had not been present in the park when such a large crowd was known to be gathering there. Park Ridge Park District Commissioner Rick Biagi called for Hinkley’s skate park to be shut down, though the alleged beating occurred near the basketball court.
Officers did step up patrols at Hinkley in the weeks following, while the Park Ridge Park District set new closing hours for its parks, setting 10:30 p.m. as the time when lights go out at Hinkley.
Carjacking shocks city
It sounded almost impossible: a child missing from a quiet, dead-end Park Ridge street after a stranger jumped into his mother’s car and sped away in the middle of the day. But the story was very real and so was the search for 5-year-old Drake Whitker, who was sleeping in the back seat of his mother’s white Audi when it was carjacked Feb. 20 just outside their home on the 1700 block of Good Avenue.
“Mom is bringing groceries back and forth into the house; she then sees the offender inside the car revving up the engine, trying to engage the car to move it,” Park Ridge Police Chief Frank Kaminski said during a press conference. “She runs out, starts pounding on the door — as any parent would — and screaming, ‘My child, don’t take my child,’ clearly telling the offender that the child is in the car.”
The mother even managed to pull the driver’s side door open and grab the offender’s arm, prosecutors said, but he allegedly pushed her away and drove off.
Park Ridge’s very first Amber Alert was issued, leading to the discovery of little Drake — safe, well and still inside the Audi — in Skokie, several miles from his home.
That night, police had a suspect in custody. Eighteen-year-old Deangelo Fountain, authorities said, had been walking through Des Plaines and Park Ridge, trying to find a way home to Evanston after leaving an Arlington Heights school earlier that day, when he spotted the white Audi, unlocked and running in a driveway.
Police say Fountain drove the car — with Drake still asleep in the back seat — all the way to Skokie before leaving it near an alley, jumping on a bus and getting a haircut before he went home.
Fountain has spent the majority of 2014 in custody of the Cook County Jail, where he has been held without bond. His next court date is Jan. 7.
Funding the Park Ridge Library
The Park Ridge Library was in the headlines frequently in 2014, beginning with a decision by the board of trustees to close the facility on Sundays during summer months. The unpopular move was one of several cost-cutting measures taken during the year as the library board’s attempt to increase its tax levy failed to find support on the City Council in late 2013.
Ultimately, trustees decided to reopen the library on Sundays in late July, though the building continues to have reduced hours on Sundays and Fridays throughout the year.
Three initiatives heavily supported by Library Trustee Robert Trizna also took effect: charges for nonresidents who use library computers and attend library programs, as well as the end of the long-standing Food for Fines clemency program. In November, Trizna generated a lengthy online debate under a Park Ridge Herald-Advocate story that reported his use of the word “parasites” when describing nonresidents who use library services but do not pay for them.
In July, the Park Ridge City Council voted to place a referendum on the ballot that would leave it up to voters to decide if the Park Ridge Library should receive an increase in tax dollars. Library supporters were initially unhappy with the language of the referendum, disagreeing with the initial tax rate cited.
And though 57 percent of voters on Nov. 4 supported an increase in property taxes to fund the library, some supporters remained wary of the City Council, questioning whether the aldermen would adopt the levy as voters had authorized.
In December, they did.
Awash with Talk of Flooding
The Park Ridge City Council spent much of 2014 engaged in talks about flood relief, primarily within three neighborhoods where potential projects had been identified.
But despite the number of hours dedicated to the subject and the dozens of residents who addressed elected officials, little was resolved by year’s end. Aldermen did direct city staff to work on an agreement that would allow a flood mitigation project to connect to a Dempster Street sewer planned by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, but the project remains in a holding pattern.
Details have yet to be hammered out between the city and the Park Ridge Park District on a proposal to use Northwest Park for stormwater detention. And a plan by aldermen to seek a second engineering consultant’s opinion on flood relief for a neighborhood west of the Park Ridge Country Club was later rejected by the council.
Perhaps the biggest issue of all — how to pay for what will amount to millions of dollars worth of projects — also remains undetermined.
Representatives from Christopher B. Burke Engineering are expected to make a return visit to City Hall on Jan. 12 to talk about nine projects that were completed in recent years and the three potential future projects that have been identified.
A New Neighborhood Pool
It wasn’t the hottest summer the Chicago area had seen, but that didn’t keep swimmers away from the newly revamped — and newly named — Centennial Aquatic Center.
The pools, featuring water slides, diving boards, a water walk and brand new concessions, opened to much fanfare on June 14, three weeks ahead of schedule. Close to 64,000 swimmers took a dip at Centennial last summer, a jump of 50 percent from the prior season, which was cut about a month short in preparation for construction. Centennial was also credited with helping the Park District see an operating profit of $72,478 across its pools for the 2014 season.
The $7.8 million project was not without its problems, however. Issues involving the pouring of a new parking lot put the project over budget by about $100,000. And greater interest in Centennial appears to have led to declining numbers at Hinkley Pool, which saw its lowest attendance in at least the last five summers.
