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Trash-Filled Ward Park's Future Uncertain Just 3 Years After It Opened

By Stephanie Lulay | April 27, 2015 5:31am

NEAR WEST SIDE — Five years after a community group rallied to create a community garden at Madison Street and Hoyne Avenue, the future of the New Haven plots is now uncertain.

Called a community "gem" just two years ago, the Wilma Ward Memorial Park garden  is covered in trash and weeds and many of the raised garden beds that line the park have been dismantled or damaged.

Trash fills a barrel once used to irrigate the garden at the Wilma Ward Memorial Park at Madison and Hoyne on the city's Near West Side. [DNAinfo/Stephanie Lulay]

The park's decline comes just three years after the park's gardens opened and five years after the Near West Side Community Development Corporation hatched a plan to create a park on three empty lots at the intersection.

Earnest Gates, executive director of the the Near West Side group, said the group hasn't figured out what is going to happen to the park, but declined to discuss the garden further.

According to the Near West Side Community Development Corporation website, the group is responsible for maintaining the park.

Once used as a community garden, Wilma Ward Memorial Park at Madison Street and Hoyne Avenue is now littered with trash. DNAinfo/Stephanie Lulay

Ald. Walter Burnett Jr. (27) said the park, which sits on city-owned lots, was intended to be a temporary park. It is not under the umbrella of the Chicago Park District. In the past, a developer sought to build affordable housing units at the site, but the deal eventually fell through, he said.

Ward Memorial Park is a new addition to Burnett's ward after a new ward map went into effect this year. The land was previously part of Ald. Bob Fioretti's 2nd Ward.

"I just inherited that" park, Burnett said.

Burnett said he has asked the ward superintendent to work to get the park cleaned up.

Ward Memorial Park's raised garden beds have been damaged. [DNAinfo/Stephanie Lulay]

The Near West Side Community Development Corporation, with the help of several dozen volunteers and part-time student employees, worked to create the Wilma Ward Memorial Park gardens five years ago. It is named for Wilma Ward, a West Haven activist who worked for the corporation and served on the Near West Side Community Development Board. She was "one of our community heroes," the corporation's website says, and advocated for residents displaced by the construction of the nearby United Center.

In 2010, Crane High School students worked to remove debris from the three city lots, clearing the land. In 2011, the development corporation brought in a landscaper and volunteers who leveled the land, trenched pathways, built flower and garden beds and laid sod, according to the group's website.

In 2012, AmeriCorps volunteers installed benches at the park and laid woodchips to complete the pathways. In past growing seasons, students from St. Malachy School, 2252 W. Washington Blvd., have used the garden beds to grow vegetables.

The park sits across the street from the Mabel Manning Library, whose namesake was known to plant flowers in old tires at an old community garden in the early 1990s at the same site where the abandoned park gardens sit at today, according to the website.

Wilma Elizabeth Ward Memorial Park is on the corner of Madison Street and Hoyne Avenue on the city's Near West Side. [DNAinfo/Stephanie Lulay]

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