Carolyn Parks can recall more than four decades’ of memories involving West Ridge Park – Easter egg hunts, soccer and baseball practices, even ice-skating and hot-air balloon launches in earlier years.
Her children, now in their 30s and 40s, would cross through neighbors’ yards to West Ridge from their home on Rosemary Road. Now, Parks takes her 7-year-old granddaughter to the park once a week after her daughter’s family moved back to the neighborhood.
That multi-generational connection to West Ridge has made it difficult for some Highland Park residents to accept the possibility of losing the park.
“All the reasons we moved here, they’re now trying to take them away,” Parks said in a recent interview.
Earlier this year, the Park District of Highland Park and North Shore School District 112 entered into talks of a possible land swap involving West Ridge. Officials are mum on the details of those ongoing talks, but the West Ridge property could end up a key part of District 112’s proposed middle school campus, which has proven to be the most controversial part of the consolidation plan.
Parks and some of her neighbors are hoping to stop that from happening. Recently, she’s collected a couple dozen signatures on a petition as a sign of opposition. Meanwhile, school officials say West Ridge likely would be kept as green space, if acquired, and that the plan is still being developed.
“We’ll look out the window and, instead of seeing the park and all the things happening there, we’ll see buildings,” Parks said.
That’s not going to happen, said Samantha Stolberg, a District 112 school board member who happens to live in the same neighborhood as Parks.
Under the school district’s proposed seven-school model, which features a proposed middle school campus where Red Oak and Sherwood elementary schools currently sit, the West Ridge property likely would be used as fields, Stolberg said.
Acquiring West Ridge would also allow more of a “buffer” for the new middle school to be built from protected wetlands between Red Oak and Sherwood, she said.
“To the best of my knowledge, at this point, there are no plans to put buildings on the West Ridge property,” said Stolberg, who has three children who attend Red Oak Elementary.
But Stolberg acknowledged it’s difficult to speak with certainty on a plan that’s still being developed. Beyond the school district’s proposed seven-building plan, other plans will also be considered by the school board, including a few that were presented at a recent board meeting.
“We don’t have anything concrete,” Stolberg said. “We’re not really there yet.”
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The school district has to figure out its plan before it can have meaningful conversations with the park district about West Ridge, she said.
Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering said she hopes to meet soon with school and park district officials to take a “more comprehensive” look at property and future planning. Highland Park is at “an interesting crossroads” with the park district’s master plan and the school district’s consolidation plan, she said.
“Everyone has an idea of how they want to move forward in a bold way,” Rotering said. “But we need to move forward in a bold and coordinated way.”
West Ridge Park sits on 10 acres next to the park district’s West Ridge Center, which houses the park district’s administrative headquarters and various recreational programming. The park itself is an expansive swath of fields with a playground, batting cage and paved walking path.
Debbie Konow, another Rosemary Road resident, said she enjoyed hearing the sounds of children playing in the park. Her concerns about the park becoming part of the middle school plan ranged from increased traffic to how the view from her backyard might be affected.
“I think it would be a big loss for our neighborhood,” Konow said.
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