SUMMARY

Corlands, a Chicago region non-profit has used GIS to help communities in Lake County define their open space and park needs, by inventorying current assets, comparing them to general standards and assisting in the preparation of specific plans for each community.

THE STORY

Seven Lake County, Illinois park districts and municipalities have participated in a pilot program that has helped them assess their park and open space resources and plan for future open space needs. The Lake County Open Space Project has been supported by CorLands, a nonprofit conservation group, and funded principally by the Grand Victoria Foundation and the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation.

CorLands staff used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to look at where parks and open space are located or needed in relation to where residents live, and how those resources will need to change to accommodate future growth.

The Buffalo Grove Park District, the Grayslake Park District, the Gurnee Park District, the Village of Hawthorn Woods, the Lindenhurst Park District, the Long Grove Park District, and the Waukegan Park District each now have open space master plans as a result of the program. CorLands has begun working with an eighth community, the Village of Antioch, for the final leg of the project. The organization has been providing the planning assistance, funded by various foundations, free of charge, with the goal of helping Lake County communities that do not have extensive in-house planning capabilities.

After gathering parkland, population-planning, and housing-density data for each municipality, CorLands planners compared the findings with national standards for how much open space should be provided for communities of a particular size, as well as where parks should be located in relation to where people live. Armed with this information, they could tell local officials if they are adequately serving local open space needs and what they need to do to meet current and/or future needs.

CorLands then worked with the park districts and municipalities to identify opportunities to expand their existing open space holdings, ultimately assembling open space master plans for them. 

“In some cases, we found that park districts might have adequate open space in terms of acreage but that the parks are not necessarily located where residents can easily get to them,” said Ed Uhlir, director of land acquisition planning for CorLands. “Maybe residents in one subdivision are too far from existing parks, or maybe there are obstacles such as railroad tracks that make getting to the parks a problem for young families.

“We also found that some park districts in landlocked areas thought they didn’t have any options for acquiring more parkland, when actually they do. The planning process helped them be more creative in their thinking.”

Tom Lippert, executive director of the Lindenhurst Park District, agrees. “Even if you’re landlocked, you never know when land might become available … Let’s say there’s a supermarket that goes vacant. The village might consider a new occupant that needs a smaller building and less parking lot. That opens up the possibility of putting a mini-park there – some landscaping and trees – so people who work and shop in the area can enjoy it.”

He also points out that an open space plan is useful when land does become available. “Maybe there’s a farmer who has a lot of land and decides he would like to donate some of it. We could come back to him and say, ‘This is great, because such a donation would fit right into our master plan.’”

Charles Balling, executive director of the Gurnee Park District, adds that an open space plan can help when time is of the essence. “The window of opportunity for land acquisition in many communities is closing due to rapid development,” he said. “To have a plan that identifies either all or most of [a community’s] potential open space acquisitions allows you to at least be aware of what’s out there and act more quickly.”

In addition to the Grand Victoria Foundation and the Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, support for the Lake County Open Space Project was provided by The Field Foundation of Illinois, the Land Trust Alliance, the Liberty Prairie Foundation, the Pritzker Foundation and the Sara Lee Corporation.

Formed in 1978, CorLands (the Corporation for Open Lands) is a nonprofit organization that helps protect and acquire land for parks, trails and natural-area conservation in northeastern Illinois. It provides open space planning, real estate negotiation and technical assistance services to local governments, private landowners and nonprofit organizations for conservation purposes. In the last five years alone, CorLands has helped save more than 10,000 acres of parks and open space in Illinois. CorLands is an affiliate of Openlands Project, one of the oldest conservation groups in the nation.

CONTACTS:

Christine V. Esposito
CorLands
773.637.3939   773.637.3966 fax
terracompr@earthlink.net
http://openlands.org/Land-Preservation/