STREETERVILLE — A new-and-improved park next to the Mag Mile Water Tower will now be surrounded by a 6-foot-tall fence after neighbors aired concerns about the park's security.
City and parks officials have spent years planning a multimillion-dollar redo of Seneca Park, a quaint park off Michigan Avenue with some benches and a small playground.
The city aimed to make the park more inviting, in part by removing what it thought was an imposing fence surrounding the property. Renderings of the redesign led by Chicago-based Site Design Group were shared last year.
RELATED: Park Near Mag Mile Water Tower Could See Face-Lift
But Streeterville neighbors told local pols Wednesday at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel they want the fence back, unless the city wants to invite "vagabonds" and other people who will trash the new park at 220 E. Chicago Ave.
"There are really shady people" in the area, said Michael Rosenblum, a real estate agent who lives nearby in Water Tower Place. "I've had people follow me when I'm leaving Neiman Marcus."
"It is not a safe area if it's not fenced," said Fred Tokowitz, who also lives in Water Tower Place. "It’s frightening when you get out at 5, 5:30 [a.m.] and see gangs of young people in the park."
Parks officials tried to assuage neighbors' fears by proposing a 4-foot-tall fence around the park. But that wasn't tall enough for some people who attended the meeting.
"I myself could climb a 4-foot-tall fence," said Diane Weinberg, who lives nearby. "And I'm not a young gang member. I'm old."
In a way, the fence is a symbol of uneasiness over rising crime in Chicago. Robberies and other crimes are up in Streeterville compared to last year, and even Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas — another Water Tower Place resident — implored Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) at the meeting to fence the park, saying Chicago has become "a fearful city."
Tuesday night's shooting of two police officers in Back of the Yards was mentioned repeatedly by many in the crowd.
Hopkins, who lives near Seneca Park and said he often walks his 2-year-old son there, acquiesced to neighbors' pleas Wednesday, saying the park will be fenced and locked up nightly after 11 p.m.
The threat of crime is in "the back of my head every time I walk down the street," Hopkins said. "I'm a lifelong Chicagoan; I know what's happening in the city and it bothers me on every possible level."
Seneca Park first opened in 1990 across the street from Eli's The Place for Steak, the precursor to Eli's Cheesecake. The park's playground is named after Eli Schulman, the restaurant's namesake.
Marc Schulman, Eli's son, is leading a fundraising campaign for the roughly $3 million it will take to redesign the park. Heather Gleason, director of planning and construction for the Chicago Park District, said the park district has spent about $400,000 on the new-and-improved park's redesign, but its construction will need to be financed by private donors.
Schulman said Wednesday that he put the park's fundraising on hold until a plan is finalized. As such the project's timeline has yet to be determined.
The redesigned park's playground would sit on top of rubber instead of mulch, and get new playthings including a tire swing set, slides embedded into the side of manmade hills, and chutes and ladders out of a 10-foot-tall structure inspired by the fire station and Old Water Tower next door.
Adults would get to lounge in either a "shade garden" or "sunny lawn" at the eastern end of the park facing the Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago Ave. The park's existing memorials to Schulman, firefighters and others would remain.
New renderings show that previously proposed undulating benches at the park's eastern end would be tossed aside if the park is fenced.
But compromise is how the sausage gets made.
"Part of my job is to determine when we get as close to consensus as we possibly can," Hopkins said. "I know we can never get 100 percent agreement from everyone in this room about every element of this design."
Seneca Park on Wednesday night as seen from the steps of the Museum of Contemporary Art. [DNAinfo/David Matthews]
