Juanita Irizarry

Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, furious over the legal battle that forced movie mogul George Lucas to cancel plans for a $743 million museum on the lakefront, derisively branded Irizarry’s organization “Friends of the Parking Lot.”

On March 31, 2003, bulldozers sent by Mayor Richard M. Daley destroyed the runway at Meigs Field. The move was seen then and now as an example of mayoral overreach.

“Our community is fighting back and saying ‘no more.’”

Community members united to demand that big music festivals leave Douglass Park, which links Little Village and Lawndale.

The price tag for restoring Chicago’s Grant Park after this year’s four-day Lollapalooza festival totaled more than $400,000, a $120,000 hike from the year before.

CHICAGO — With a community-led movement to evict big-ticket music festivals from Douglass Park gaining steam, Riot Fest management has let go its event organizer and apologized to the community for his “tone” at a neighborhood meeting last week that only seemed to exacerbate the festival’s fraught relationship with residents.

With so many far more pressing issues around town and in the parks that are in need of public funding, taxpayers shouldn’t be made responsible for a billion-dollar stadium renovation.

Part of the project would be funded by selling naming rights to Soldier Field in a “sensitive” way that retains the name “Soldier” in its title as a war memorial.

Friends of the Parks Executive Director Juanita Irizarry is excited about plans for more green space, which is at least a start on keeping a long-ago promise to move Soldier Field parking lots to the west side of DuSable Lake Shore Drive.

CHICAGO — Giant concrete barriers separate a field of jagged rocks from a grassy playground at Rogers Park Beach on Lake Michigan. There is no white sand. Only “do not swim” signs spray-painted on the uninviting blocks.