The Winnetka Park District Board voted unanimously on Aug. 17 to increase security measures and add signage at the entrances to Elder Lane Beach to ensure people aren’t entering the closed beach.
Elder Lane Beach has been closed for nearly four years due to unsafe conditions including exposed wire mesh used to retain the bluffs and prevent erosion.
Superintendent of Parks Costa Kutulas told the board the cost would be minimal as staff plans to use fencing previously purchased to fence off the dog beach at Centennial Beach before the village put a stop to it in January. Eight signs indicating the beach is closed were also purchased for $400 and will be placed in the area.
While fencing can be placed at entrances at the park level, it can’t be placed on the beach without filing permits with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, so travel along the sand will still be possible. The fencing does not require a permit by the village as it is on Park District property, according to Kutulas, who said barriers could be in place as early as this week.
Winnetka resident Kim Marsh said during public comment that the beach areas need to be visible and have clear sight lines. She referenced the July 4 drowning of 43-year-old Winnetka resident Luke Laidley, who had jumped into the water to help some children who were struggling. Marsh said that if if the sight lines hadn’t been clear, he wouldn’t have been seen at all. Commissioner Cynthia Rapp asked if fencing could be placed further down the ramp to Elder Beach to allow residents to get to an overlook area that provides a view. Kutulas said having the fencing up higher on the tableland would allow observers toclearly see if someone were to jump over the fencing. If it were placed further down, observers wouldn’t be able to view that, he indicated.
Commissioner Colleen Root also hoped to keep the ramp open for runners, saying she understands the fence at the tableland is a greater deterrent but wants to keep the option available to those in the neighborhood.
“That beach has been closed four years. The neighborhood loves that beach. They came and came and came this spring asking ‘could you please get it open?’” she said. “That would give people the opportunity to come on down to look and picnic or whatever they do but not access the beach.”
She also said increased police presence in the area could be another deterrent.
Superintendent of Recreation Kyle Berg said if the board wants to provide access to any part of the beach, working on the improvements needed to get the beach open would be more beneficial than to continue adding fencing and other mitigation measures.
“Commissioner Root, I agree with you. We do want to open Elder Beach. I think all of us at this table want to open Elder Beach and we’ve spent hundreds of hours trying to open Elder Beach,” Board Vice President Eric Lussen said. “For a variety of reasons, we’re not there. In the meantime, we need to secure that beach and prevent people from going there and putting themselves and others at risk.”
Issues at the beach have occurred as recently as Aug. 15 after Ebrahim S. Akhoon of Glendale Heights went missing while swimming on Elder Beach and was found dead two days later at Gillson Beach in Wilmette.
Board President Christina Codo started the meeting expressing sympathies to the family.
The board voted 5-2 to transfer up to $120,000 of budgeted hard costs to soft costs for the Elder Lane and Centennial Beach projects. The funding could be used to explore the damage and needed improvements to the existing pier on Elder Beach in an effort to get the beach open sooner.
“For me, if we spend the right amount of money and do the planning process correctly and continue to refine, then I think we’ll come up with a better solution,” Codo said. “I think each of these refinements is progress.”
Root and Rapp voted against the transfer, saying so much money has been spent already for the little progress that has been made.
Commissioner Warren James said the only way to move the project forward is to advance the permit process.
“We have essentially been compelled to make changes by the village actions, but we still have a fiduciary responsibility to our own constituents to correct the deficiencies at Elder and to reopen the beach,” he said. “We are talking about modifying plans to do so. Our consultants have … been stymied and in fact spending more time than anticipated trying to address the changes that have been imposed by the village’s most recent actions.”
The Winnetka Village Council voted in July to put a hold on lakefront construction for nine months in response to resident concerns about construction at billionaire resident Justin Ishbia’s property south of Centennial Beach that decimated the bluffs. The ongoing construction along with his unfinished land swap with the Park District has caused continued uproar in the village since May 2022. Council also voted to add a layer of permitting with the village to any lakefront construction on top of what is already required by several county and federal agencies.
