North Cook News

This month, the Board President of Wilmette Park, Michael Murdock, outlined the recent steps that the board took to solicit community feedback on the future of Gillson Park. He also laid out plans for the next steps to determine that future. 

In a recent meeting, Murdock said, "If you recall, we did decide to go for sort of one last round of committed community input, specifically with circulation. There were a number of other options out there that we chose not to survey. And my recollection was there was some talk about picnic shelters, for example. There was some talk about some boardwalks over the sand dunes to perhaps protect them. So in terms of our conversation tonight, I imagined that we would talk specifically about circulation and then in a subsequent meeting probably sooner than later. Talk about some of those other options about whether we want them included in the plan and give folks in the community an opportunity to come to a meeting and give some input on that. So if we are trying to move this forward tonight, I would hope that tonight's discussion would focus primarily on circulation and then either the September committee, the whole meeting, or the October board meeting, or the October committee, the whole talk about any of those other add ons as we loosely refer it to them, so that when we get to the November capital meeting, we do have a better idea of what that scope might entail to try to have an appropriate placeholder for that."

Residents were asked to complete a survey about Gillson Park by the village board. In response to a question, a community member asked how and to whom the survey was distributed. She was told it went out on their email list, which community members voluntarily subscribe to.

It was a fairly short survey, just to get a general idea of people's opinions on a wide range of topics. Middle Drive could be converted to a multi-use path, or both Middle Drive and Upper Drive could be removed and turned into a field, or none of those options could be selected. A little less than 40% of the voters voted for converting Middle Drive, while about 34% voted none of the options, with 16% voting to remove Middle and 10% voting to remove both. 

Following a lengthy discussion, the board decided that the results of the survey showed that most people would prefer to change the current situation than keep the road as it is. Concept one was chosen, converting Middle Drive into a multi-use path for pedestrians and cyclists, reducing pavement. In order to create more detailed plans, they decided to take that idea to the finance and engineering departments.