Dear fellow Chicagoans:

Have you heard about the Francis Parker's plans to install artificial turf and stadium lighting on their Lincoln Park West field?

A group of neighbors was informed by Parker last week that the school will install 4 58 ft. high stadium lights on their Lincoln Park playing field. We should be prepared, Parker told us, for the possibility that the lights will be turned on for as many as 100 games per year. The lights will go on as early as 4:30 and stay on as late as 9:00.

Glaring stadium lighting will devastate our tranquil and architecturally significant parkway. It is an extraordinary incursion upon the historic and natural fabric of Lincoln Park.

This is round #2 of the Latin soccer field debacle. The judge who compelled Latin to share space observed that if Latin were given such prerogatives, would Francis Parker come next? Now we have an answer. Parker wants to illuminate the historic gateway to Lincoln Park and all of its neighbors and do it in perpetuity with no obligation to share.

None of the other nine schools in Parker's athletic league have a private lighted field. Why does Parker need one? And why should the Lincoln Park neighborhood -- a dense residential setting with vested public interests in its historical and natural beauty -- be the starting point for what is, at base, a facilities arms race among Chicago's private schools?

A group of Francis Parker's neighbors have put together a website Please visit us at www.francisparkerneighbors.org. We have people to contact and a petition to sign. We also have a facebook page at francisparkerneighbors, so please friend us. We need to register our objections to Alderman Vi Daley immediately, before this becomes yet another done deal.



Please help us get the word out!

Many thanks,
Francis Parker Neighbors