Mayor Lightfoot: You Need to Open Chicago’s Beaches in 2021
On Saturday, August 9, Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot visited the concrete-lined lakeshore just south of Montrose Beach after hearing of a large gathering there. “This reckless behavior on Montrose Beach is what will cause us to shut down the parks and lakefront,” she tweeted along with a photo of the group in question. “It’s being addressed,” she followed up soon after. It sounded ominous. That night, park district crews set up fencing blocking access to the water along the harbor, while the next day police were dispatched to tell anyone tarrying along the lakefront in that area to leave, even if they were alone or in small groups.
As any visitor to the lakefront this summer could tell you, hundreds of people have been hanging out on the slivers of rocks, concrete, and grass areas lining the shore all along its 18 miles every day ever since Lightfoot decided to keep Chicago beaches closed this summer. Desperate for some fresh air, cool water, and perhaps simply the calming sight of the watery expanse itself, many of us found places to take a refreshing dip or swim away from the lifeguard sentries, but the deeper depths and the waves crashing into the walls make these spots choppy and potentially dangerous. Meanwhile miles of empty sand have remained frustratingly inaccessible, especially taunting on days of shimmering heat.
While the majority of visitors to these informal beach areas have been small groups or individuals distanced responsibly from each other, occasionally larger groups like the one the mayor referenced have gathered — as they continue to do in parks and other public areas across the city. I have witnessed basketball games involving a dozen players ignored by distancing enforcement staff and massive gatherings of hundreds of maskless people in city parks, with zero police presence or official concern.
But perhaps because pictures of crowded beaches bring potentially negative optics, they remain the mayor’s focus, despite the benefits that they bring to our public physical and mental health. City planner Robert Burnham understood this back in the 19th century. “Not a foot of its shores should be appropriated to the exclusion of the people,” he famously wrote. While he was speaking of development, he clearly understood the power of the lakefront to soothe and rejuvenate our spirits. Not everyone has air conditioning at home or the means to escape the city for somewhere else that offers respite, and with public pools and many gym pools closed indefinitely, the beaches offer a much-needed outlet for exercise and activity, especially for those who feel going to indoor gyms or fitness classes is too risky.
Frustratingly, Lightfoot’s continued insistence on keeping the beaches closed makes no scientific or logical sense, especially when compared to other activities that have been permitted to resume. One frequently cited study of 7,000 cases of COVID-19 in China found a single transmission from contact outdoors, and that one resulted from a long conversation between two friends. Another study found that the airborne virus is rapidly disabled by sunlight. Some public health experts have suggested beaches offer a low-risk outlet for the need to get outdoors. Yet to counter the argument that people need the lakefront to cool off, the city, confusingly, proffered indoor cooling centers as an alternative. Bars and restaurants were allowed to open and remain so, even as one study earlier this summer found a correlation between rising infection rates and credit card spending at such establishments. Most confoundingly, only days before the mayor brought the hammer down even harder on lakefront monitoring, the city allowed restaurants on the beach to reopen.
It’s unclear if the enforcement will continue after Labor Day, the traditional end of the beach season. Regardless, for next year there is a way the city can open the beaches for residents to enjoy safely. Keep parking limited. Make distancing enforcement personnel actually do their jobs. Require beachgoers to maintain six feet from each other, and break up or prohibit groups of larger than five or six.
We are facing a bleak winter of months of indoor lockdown, isolation, and potentially more deaths from the coronavirus amid the specter of the perhaps permanent breakdown of our American democracy. Denying us the safe, small pleasure of enjoying our lakefront treasure is making preparing for an uncertain future more difficult — and all the more so if we suspect next summer will be more of the same.
As all Chicagoans know, the prospect of the summer keeps us going while we face the unending gray skies, bitter wind, and grim landscape of the city from January through April. Please, Mayor Lightfoot, let us enjoy the beaches safely next year.
