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Originally Posted by the urban politician
^ Wow, Milwaukee and Chicago truly are bro cities. Park preservationalist meat-heads just keep wanting to fight progress so that green lawns can remain windswept and boring
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Hadn't paid any attention to this, finally decided to look into it. This case is truly ridiculous and has nothing to do with trying to preserve current parkland. This site isn't a park, it's fully developed. It looks like a park at first from the aerials, but that's because the eastern half has a green roof. From street level it's just a building, built out right to the sidewalk. No current parkland is being developed.
They're arguing that the site was the historic Lake Michigan shoreline, and therefore can't be developed. But today it's across a 4 lane road from the lakefront parks. I haven't seen anyone in Chicago claiming that Streeterville can't be developed because it used to be in the lake.
So I'd say the Milwaukee courts made the right decision, but I wouldn't extrapolate this result to what's been discussed in Chicago.