The Park District of La Grange today said it will appeal a Cook County Circuit Court judge's ruling last Friday that its contract with Atlantic Realty Partners would sell 3.5 acres of Gordon Park to the developer, not the 2.82 Park District officials have always maintained.
The announcement was made in a press release posted on the Park District's website earlier today.
“It has been PDLG’s intention all along to sell no more than 2.82 acres of property at Gordon Park,” Park Commissioner Chris Walsh said in the release.
The release also said Judge Susan Fox Gillis "added 0.69 acres of land from the vacated street, Shawmut Avenue" to arrive at the 3.5-acre figure.
"The judge found that the vacated portion of Shawmut Avenue, which is adjacent to the property the PDLG and ARP [Atlantic Realty Partners] intended to transfer, had to be included in the land being sold because no plat documents had been recorded more than fifty years ago," the release said. "A plat document would have created a separate lot for legal purposes. PDLG never included the vacated street in its sale to ARP, nor did ARP ever wish to purchase the vacated street."
Park Commissioner Tim Kelpsas, in remarks quoted today by the Suburban Life newspaper in its online edition, also blamed Judge Gillis for inflating the amount of acreage.
“The forced increase in (the amount of) our property for sale is what caused this problem,” Kelpsas told the newspaper.
Without a successful appeal of the judge's ruling, the Park District would have to seek approval of the sale from voters in a public referendum. Under Illinois law, the Circuit Court can approve the sale or conveyance of public parkland only in amounts up to three acres.
Mark Daniel, the attorney who successfully argued the 3.5-acre figure in his motion for summary judgment on behalf of La Grange resident Orlando Coryell, who opposed the sale, said this evening that the Park District's interpretation of Judge Gillis' ruling is "absolutely incorrect."
"The judge had uncontested evidence," Daniel said. "She did not change the contract, she only read it."
Daniel said Park District officials might be confused because of the way the legal description is presented in the contract.
The parcel north of Shawmut Ave, for example, is accurately described as Lots 4 through 12 and a portion of Lot 13 from the land plat for a residential subdivision originally planned for that ground, he said. But additional wording precisely describing the land attached to those lots when Shawmut Ave was vacated has been "selectively omitted."
However, there remains in the contract's legal description the words "and all rights, privileges, appurtenances and hereditaments."
That last word legally describes the attached land comprising vacated Shawmut Ave, Daniel said, although "a board member who is not an attorney would not recognize that language as including the roadway because of the Olde English terminology."
But it was the basis of the judge's decision, he said, along with the title insurance policy, which contains the full, unedited legal description.
Chicago Title Insurance Company, the 161-year-old firm that issued the policy, knew what it was insuring and did not omit any wording from its description, Daniel said.
Daniel also disputed the Park District's claim it intends to sell only 2.82 acres.
"A contract that is clear on its face is intent," Daniel said.
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