METERED SITTING Concrete will get a makeover in Bucktown on Friday 21 for National PARK(ing) Day.

Photo: Martha Williams

On Friday 21, parking spaces near Milwaukee Avenue and Leavitt Street will become park spaces—yes, the kind with grass. As part of National PARK(ing) Day, the Trust for Public Land, the Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail and other partners will carpet the concrete with sod and invite the public to the “instant park.” TPL Chicago-area director Beth White says, “The whole idea is to show a different alternative…and to celebrate the importance of green space.”

TPL picked the intersection to call attention to the Bloomingdale Trail overhead, White says; the group has been helping acquire plots along the three-mile-long abandoned rail bed for new parks and access points, in hopes that a $50 million proposal to turn the space into a linear park will one day become reality. While Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail founder Josh Deth says it will be “a long time before the trail is built” (proposed ideas include having community farm plots and a bike path), there has been plenty of headway. Here’s a trailblazing time line.

Photo: Martha Williams

Late 1990s
Service along the Bloomingdale Line—operated by Canadian Pacific Railroad and serving a small manufacturing district across the city’s Northwest Side—slows to a halt.

2002–04
• The conversion of the rail bed into a park is proposed and approved by the city and the Chicago Park District as part of the Logan Square Open Space Plan.
• Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail, a grassroots, nonprofit advocacy group, forms.

2006–07
• The TPL acquires lots at Albany Avenue and Whipple Street and transfers ownership to the city for use as access points proposed for every six to nine blocks.
• MetLife Foundation makes a generous donation to TPL for future park improvements at the Albany/Whipple site.

2007
• The Bloomingdale Collaborative forms, made up of the city’s Department of Planning and Development, TPL, Friends of the Bloomingale Trail and more than a dozen other organizations. Members meet to chart progress, come up with new ideas, and figure out the best way to communicate trail news to the public.
• Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail distributes questionnaires to community members, at events like outdoor summer festivals, for use in conceptual meetings in the fall.
• The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning recommends the trail for $2.6 million in federal funds for preliminary engineering.
• The successful “Envisioning the Bloomingdale” art exhibit, sponsored by the Bloomingdale Collaborative and the Chicago Architectural Club, runs three months at Acme Artworks.
• Local artists take to the walls of the 37 viaducts as part of the Bloomingdale Mural Project.
• The city and TPL work to acquire additional properties for access points, including four lots near Milwaukee and Leavitt, and receive a charitable donation of land for another access point along the trail.

For more info, visit tpl.org, bloomingdaletrail.org and bloomingdalemuralproject.org.