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player ready...As more stand-up paddleboard fans seek to launch and store their watercraft at the Wilmette Park District’s Gillson Park sailing beach, the district board’s lakefront committee is facing a growing problem: how to safely and fairly allocate a finite amount of beach.
Space and beach access concerns have been on the rise for the last couple of years, according to Kathy Bingham, district recreation superintendent. Those concerns are tied to what she described as an explosive growth in the use of paddleboards, also known as SUPs, which allow users to stand up while steering with a long paddle. A more gradual increase in the number of kayaks stored at or launched from the beach has also added to the space crunch, she said.
Bingham also told commissioners at their Feb. 1 meeting that it will be a challenge to balance the needs of three groups: existing sailing beach users, patrons on increasingly long waiting lists for space at the beach, and people who use the Gillson swimming beach directly to the south of the sailing beach.
Users must pay for membership to use the sailing beach, which is the only part of Gillson Beach where boats are allowed to be stored or launched.
“It’s a crowded shoreline, so we have to be careful,” Bingham said. “We don’t want to make this a negative experience for people…We only have so much space.”
The safety of sailing beach users is also a concern when the beach is crowded, she told the committee. Last year, officials moved the launch area for paddleboards to the south end of the sailing beach near where trail-in boats are launched, to keep them as far as possible from larger hulled boats to the north, she said.
Last year, the sailing beach was home to 170 catamarans, 311 so-called mono-hull or single-hulled boats such as small sailboats and kayaks, and 110 paddleboards, Bingham said.
She said boat and paddleboard owners who are sailing beach members rent space for their craft, either on racks or on the sand, during the sailing season. The district also rents out some sailboats and kayaks. Additionally, boat and SUP users can also pay for trail-in rights that allow them to bring in their craft on a daily or seasonal basis if they don’t have assigned beach space.
There are now 120 people on the SUP wait list for sailing beach access, and roughly 75 people are on a similar list for mono-hull boats, Bingham said.
“It’s a huge challenge and quite a conundrum,” she said.
Commissioner Shelley Shelly, who heads the committee, said Feb. 4 that potential options for addressing space and wait list problems include adding some paddleboard storage on the beach to cut a tiny bit into the existing waiting list, or moving paddleboard use to Langdon Beach. She also said the district might consider expanding the sailing beach’s 950-foot long expanse by cutting into the swimming beach.
Bingham, however, said adding space to the sailing beach by cutting into the swimming beach could be hard.
Lakefront manager Holly Specht said at the committee meeting that people move off the wait list and onto the sailing beach as spots open up – for instance, if someone who had a beach membership and rented space there in the previous season does not sign a new contract by a deadline. This year, contract deadlines are in mid-March, Specht said.
Committee member Bryan Abbott said he was concerned about the growth of waiting lists, like those for boat space at the privately-operated Wilmette Harbor just south of Gillson Park
“We’re turning into the harbor,” he said.
The lakefront committee will next meet in March.
Twitter: @pioneer_kathy
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