Important Bloomingdale Trail meeting about framework plan is Thursday

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Photo from the October charrette. 

The results of all the two previous public meetings for the Bloomingdale Trail, a three-day charrette in October and a meeting in December, will be presented Thursday in the “framework plan”. What is the framework plan? The Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail website, now operated by the Trust for Public Land, has a handy FAQ (pdf):

A framework plan is a document that sets the overall vision for a project without necessarily making specific design decisions. When a project is particularly large or complex, as is the case with the Bloomingdale Trail and Park, framework plans are an essential first stage in the design process. The basic principles established in the Bloomingdale Framework Plan can then be taken and used to drive the specific design decisions that will be made in the next phases of the project.

For example, the Bloomingdale Framework Plan will suggest ways to maximize the use of the limited space available on the top of the Bloomingdale Trail and Park, detail the basic layout of the Bloomingdale’s pathway, and create general guidelines for incorporating the arts on the Bloomingdale Trail and Park.

Event information

Thursday, March 8
Open House #1: 5 – 6 PM
Public Hearing: 6 – 7:30 PM
Open House #2: 7:30 – 8 PM

The two open houses are essentially the same. You only need to attend one.

Yates Elementary School
1839 N. Richmond Street
Chicago, Illinois 60647

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Photo from the December meeting by Colin Clinard. We didn’t report on this meeting; the main thing to report was that many residents had concerns about their property and whether it was a trail or a park. Short answer: it’s both. Long answer? There are lots of ways to use design to make it seem like one, like the other, and to keep cycling traffic slow when it needs to be slow. 

13 thoughts on “Important Bloomingdale Trail meeting about framework plan is Thursday”

  1. I’ve seen a few of the renderings, and I think they are pretty impressive…but I ain’t gonna be the one to leak ’em. Folks’ll have to attend the meeting!

  2. I wish I could go to this.  Unfortunately, it’s not quite close enough to where I have to be at 6 for another event.  *sigh*  Too many events of interest, not enough time.  I’ll look forward to hearing about this afterwards.

  3. Thanks for sharing! We just moved to the area and are so excited to have this trail/park right in our backyard. Can’t wait to see the plans tonight.

  4. I hope they install public telescopes to take advantage of one of the few relatively less light-polluted parts of the city!

    1. One of the goals/guidelines that the design team adopted is to not let light leak beyond an imagined wall extending towards the sky from the retaining wall. 

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