Testimony from four of the five witnesses who appeared on behalf of the Park District of La Grange in Cook County Circuit Court today focused on the often unplayable condition of Gordon Park's baseball fields following rainstorms.
In making a case for the Park District's petition to sell two from the northwest corner of Gordon Park, comprising 2.82 acres, attorney Rob Bush told Judge Susan Fox Gillis that the proceeds from the sale are needed to fund a long overdue renovation of the park's recreational facilities.
Tom Cushing, current president of the La Grange Little League, and Tim Farnan, league president from 2007-08, testified that the accumulation of rainwater on the two southernmost ball fields forced the cancellation of numerous games in recent years.
Cushing said that the problem was so chronic that the league this year relocated its entire girls softball schedule to a ball field at the Spring Ave School.
Tom Shannon, a lifelong La Grange resident and attorney, testified that he had monitored the often flooded conditions of the Gordon Park ball fields during his daily train commute to his office in downtown Chicago.
Kate Brogan testified that half of her daughter's softball games at Gordon Park had been canceled due to water accumulating on the fields.
A fifth witness, Don Robertson, a local board member of the American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO), testified that the league had played games on various fields at Gordon Park but that none offered optimal conditions. He said a new regulation-size field the Park District plans to build there would be welcomed by the league.
Robertson also testified that AYSO had for several years played games on a field on one of the two parcels the Park District is seeking to sell. But he said that play was encumbered by a slope in the landscape that caused balls kicked off the field to roll away downhill.
Tom Beyer, one of three attorneys representing La Grange Friends of the Park, a group of some 20 residents who oppose the sale of the 2.82 acres, objected to much of the testimony of all five witnesses, which largely addressed conditions on the portion of Gordon Park that the Park District intends to keep and improve, not the two parcels it wants to sell.
Beyer argued that under the statute invoked by the Park District, it bore the burden of convincing the court that the 2.82 acres it wants to sell is no longer needed or useful as parkland.
What the Park District would due with any proceeds from a sale was irrelevant, Beyer said.
Bush noted that the Park District had cited in its application several reasons why maintaining the 2.82 acres was a burden, but argued that there was a "rational relationship" in selling a relatively small portion of the park in order to significantly improve the facilities on what parkland remained.
Judge Gillis overruled Beyer's objection, stating that she intended to give both sides wide latitude in their presentation of testimony and evidence. She noted that the proceedings were a bench trial, where no jury was involved, and that she reserved the right to later ignore testimony that she deemed immaterial.
Gillis also denied a motion from the Friends' attorneys made immediately prior to the trial to dismiss the Park District's amended application.
The amendment, presented by Bush in a motion as the day's first order of business and accepted by Gillis, would, if the judge eventually approves the application, allow the Park District to sell the land to any potential buyer. The petition originally named developer Atlantic Realty Partners (ARP) as the intended purchaser of the parcels.
Beyer argued that selling the two park parcels to anyone other than ARP would cause the reversion of a land swap between the Park District and the Village of La Grange, involving a vacated portion of Shawmut Ave that had previously been attached to the parcels.
In that event, Beyer said, the amount of land comprised by the two parcels would amount to 3.5 acres, not 2.82. As the statute only allows the court to directly approve the sale of three acres or less, the court would not have jurisdiction, he said.
With the land swap likely out of the picture, Beyer argued, the judge now faced a situation identical to the one presented by the Park District in a prior application it filed with the court in 2007.
In a hearing on that petition, Gillis eventually ruled that the amount of land described in the legal description of a sales contract between the Park District and ARP was, without the land swap having yet occurred, indeed 3.5 acres and beyond the court's jurisdiction.
Regarding the latest petition, however, Gillis said its legal description specifically excludes vacated Shawmut Ave and noted that the land swap was still in force, although it will expire on Dec. 31 unless ARP takes title to the land and puts a shovel in the ground.
Gillis did not state how she would address a reversion of the land swap if she were to approve the sale of the parkland to a purchaser other than ARP.
Amending the Park District's petition also opened the door for residents other than those comprising the Friends to address the court with their objections to the sale.
When Gillis asked if any such objectors were present, six individuals stepped forward. They were identified as Fred Metzger, Gwyn Jones, Gary Lundin, Ann Kleboe and two others whose names could not be confirmed at the time this story was written. All said they resided within the boundaries of the Park District.
Gillis listened patiently to all their objections, which were similar if not always identical to those contained in filings on behalf of the Friends.
The trial is scheduled to continue this morning at 10 a.m. in Rm.1706 of the Daley Center in Chicago with the Park District presenting additional testimony. Among the witnesses expected to take the stand are ARP President Richard Aaronson and former Park District Commissioner and President Rob Metzger.