SOUTH DEERING — South Siders are fundraising to build more trails in a massive park that’s already become a destination for mountain bike enthusiasts in recent years.
Big Marsh Park, 11559 S. Stony Island Ave., opened on a former industrial dump site in 2016. Since then, waves of development at the 300-acre park have brought bike tracks and jumps, birding paths and bird tracking systems, commissioned art, the Ford Calumet Environmental Center and more.
Park supporters want to raise $1.5 million for eight new trails, of which half would be dirt and half would be capped with an all-weather material, said Paul Fitzgerald, executive director of Friends of Big Marsh.
Organizers have raised more than $300,000 to date, while The Builder’s Initiative has pledged another $250,000 in matching funds to encourage new donations, Fitzgerald said.
Of the money raised, $35,000 is from neighbors and other grassroots supporters, while $100,000 is from a major donor. A $200,000 donation from Chicago-based bicycle parts manufacturer SRAM is being processed, he said.
To donate to the project, click here.
The vision is for a set of trails that gets progressively harder, from “something my third-grade daughter can ride on” to courses that can draw hardcore, out-of-state riders to the Southeast Side bike park, Fitzgerald said.
“We already get riders from Indiana, from Wisconsin, from Rockford to come to Big Marsh,” he said. With the new trails, “we can keep attracting that kind of interest and keep drawing the community to the park.”
About 1 mile of new trails would be built alongside a structure that would allow riders to “drop in” to trails at the appropriate speeds, Fitzgerald said. Construction would start in summer if the goal is reached, and the trails could be completed by fall, Fitzgerald said.
With the new trails, “somebody who lives in South Deering or South Shore can practice [at Big Marsh] before they go to Palos or the Farside bike park” in Galena, Illinois, he said. “Before people travel to mountain bike, they can get the skills they need and practice close to home.”
The trails would be built on the park’s “big hill,” which has been created from landfill from other local construction projects. The hill was seeded with grass and left untouched for about a year and a half, before more recently being used for sledding and a few cyclocross events, like last May’s “Afterglow” series of races.
Several events are planned for Big Marsh Park in the coming weeks as fundraising continues. The Chicago Park District’s Polar Adventure Days, which feature sled dogs, live music, guided bird hikes and more, is noon-3 p.m. Saturday and again on Feb. 17.
The park will also host a Hugh Jass fat-tire bike race — the series’ only race held outside of Wisconsin this year — on Feb. 10. Registration is $40 and opens at 9 a.m., while the race starts at 11 a.m. and an afterparty and awards ceremony starts at 1 p.m. To register, click here.
“I truly believe we’ll raise all the funds to build the design that we have,” Fitzgerald said. “If we fall short, [the trails] may be less exciting or less than what we hope to end up with. But I’m very confident that by phasing [construction] if we need to, we’ll hit all those lines.”
Though the Big Marsh fundraiser aims to build a recreational bike park, the project fits in well among a series of proposed upgrades that can improve Far South Siders’ pedestrian and bike commutes, Fitzgerald said.
Friends of Big Marsh and other backers unveiled the East Side Community Connections plan in July, which recommends ways to improve access to the park and surrounding areas. The estimated cost of completing all the plan’s recommendations is $58.8 million.
Among the recommendations:
- A bridge for pedestrians and cyclists connecting a new entrance on the park’s east side with 116th Street.
- A greenway and sidewalks along Carondolet Avenue between 126th Place and 130th Street.
- A side path and narrower lanes for cars along Torrence Avenue between 122nd Street and the Calumet River.
- A one-lane reduction for cars and a new, two-way bike lane along Torrence Avenue between 104th and 122nd streets.
- New bike and pedestrian infrastructure along 103rd Street, Stony Island Avenue and 122nd Street near the park.
Whether the recommended projects are actually built depends largely on government funding and backing, so “friends and neighbors need to make sure we loudly support those recommendations,” Fitzgerald said.
Plans for a Lake Calumet trail are also in the works, which supporters say would improve travel between Big Marsh Park and the Pullman National Monument near 111th Street while creating access points for Lake Calumet visitors.
Preliminary work will also soon begin on a 130th Street side path that could better connect Far South Side communities like Altgeld Gardens and Golden Gate with neighboring areas, city officials announced earlier this month.
All that will also complement the long-delayed, $3.6 billion project to extend the south branch of the Red Line nearly 6 miles to 130th Street, Fitzgerald said.
“We like to think that together, [these projects] make a network that will connect the extended Red Line to Hegewisch and to the East Side in a way that we haven’t been connected before,” Fitzgerald said.
“The hope is that these different projects that we’re recommending … can form the network that we need to get around an area that was designed for heavy industry.”
Support Local News!
Subscribe to Block Club Chicago, an independent, 501(c)(3), journalist-run newsroom. Every dime we make funds reporting from Chicago’s neighborhoods. Already subscribe? Click here to gift a subscription, or you can support Block Club with a tax-deductible donation.
Listen to the Block Club Chicago podcast:
