Long-stalled plans to redesign a piece of Kenwood shoreline continue to draw pushback from area residents, who say city officials are not sufficiently taking their feedback into account.
Last February, after nearly a decade-long hiatus on the project, the city unveiled a new draft design for the Morgan Shoal shoreline, a rocky, undeveloped stretch of the lakefront that spans roughly 45th to 51st streets.
Officials soon launched a series of community meetings about the redesign, at which residents shared suggestions and criticisms for incorporation into updated designs.
But these meetings have largely been an arena for negotiating conflict between the project’s designers, who say that an overhaul of the site needs to happen to mitigate rapid erosion and flooding, and preservationists who say they want to see the park left basically as it is. At another meeting for the project late last month, these conflicts continued.
“I have essentially the exact same question and comment that I did at the very beginning of this process,” said Amanda Egberts, a member of the preservation group Advocates for Morgan Shoal, at a public meeting late last month. “There is a fundamental disconnect between this and public engagement.”
Held in a muggy Kennecott Park Field House, this meeting was the sixth forum on the project since last February. The Chicago Public Building Commission had just released its latest draft design for Morgan Shoal — and preservation advocates were not happy.
As Egberts spoke, often gesturing to a crowd of 50 or so attendees behind her, a panel of representatives from city and federal agencies sat at tables at the head of the field house gymnasium and listened quietly.
Throughout the evening, several attendees took to the microphone to tell officials that they were concerned federal funding could fall through, that the public vetting process wasn’t transparent enough and that they weren’t consulted early and seriously enough in the redesign process to give real input.
“We’re not meeting with you all to decide what happens,” said Tchiya Amet El Maatif, another shoreline preservation advocate and a Kenwood resident. “You’re telling us what you’re going to do. So, it’s not a community meeting.”
Officials, however, have said that an overhaul of the site needs to happen to address ongoing erosion and coastal storm damage, and it needs to happen soon. Principally, city officials and coastal engineers have said erosion poses a threat to DuSable Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, the expressway which hugs much of the city’s shoreline.
Erosion, evaluation and reconstruction of Morgan Shoal
The bulk of Chicago’s shoreline was constructed between 1910 and 1934 — but by the 1950s, city officials had grown concerned about its degradation.
In 1974, Congress directed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to investigate erosion along Illinois’ entire Lake Michigan shoreline.
Twenty years later, the USACE concluded its investigation. In 1994, it published a Feasibility Report for the Chicago Shoreline Storm Damage Reduction Project, which led to authorization of the Chicago Shoreline Protection Project as part of the Water Resources Development Act of 1996.
The Chicago Shoreline Protection Project proposed the construction of a concrete and steel revetment spanning eight miles of the city’s shoreline. Those eight miles of shoreline were later divided into 23 sections for subsequent planning and construction purposes.
Two major federal reviews of the redesign project needed to be completed before final designs could be issued and construction could commence: the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 review, also known as the NEPA review, and the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 review, commonly referred to as the Section 106 review.
A NEPA review is undertaken to ensure that federal agencies consider the environmental effects of their actions before making decisions. It can involve three levels of analysis and response.
The initial analysis may find that a project has “no impact on the human environment,” giving designers the go-ahead without requiring deeper review. Alternatively, a project could be found to have some impact, thereby requiring an environmental assessment (EA) to determine whether it has the potential to cause “significant environmental impacts.” If the project has potential to cause significant environmental impacts, then an environmental impact statement (EIS) must be produced before it can move forward.
The USACE’s 1994 Feasibility Report included an environmental assessment, which concluded that the reconstruction project would have no significant impact for all eight miles of the shoreline — including the Morgan Shoal section.
Construction commenced on the shoreline, with the USACE completing the 23 sections one at a time. Before embarking on a new section, the agency conducted supplemental environmental assessments (SEA), which found no significant environmental impact on each as they progressed. And so, section by section, deteriorating stone revetment was replaced by concrete and steel.
By the early 2000s, USACE had completed 21 of the 23 Chicago shoreline sections — what remained were the stretches of Morgan Shoal and Promontory Point.
Those stretches, according to an agreement between the city and USACE, were left for the city to pay for. (Legislation in 2022, however, directed the USACE to share in the costs.)
The Morgan Shoal section is one of few reaches of the city’s shoreline — along with a section near La Rabida Children’s Hospital in Jackson Park — where Silurian dolomite bedrock comes to or near to the surface. Though the city intended to construct the same steel and concrete revetment that spans much of the shoreline, this bedrock inhibited those plans.
The city went back to the drawing board, holding a series of community meetings about redesigning the area in 2014 and 2015, which resulted in the Chicago Park District’s 2015 Framework Plan for Morgan Shoal.
In the meantime, the stretch has deteriorated as a result of erosion and winter storms.
A draft conceptual rendering of the new Pebble Beach.
Provided
What’s in the plan?
The latest draft design for the Morgan Shoal site has changed appreciably since its debut in February 2024.
On one hand, the new Pebble Beach is now much larger than initially proposed and is designed to maintain a sense of seclusion for beach users, as suggested by some community members. On the other hand, because the principal purpose of the project is to mitigate erosion – according to the USACE, 91% of the revetment along this reach has experienced structural or functional failure – the bulk of the February plan for a new slope stone revetment around Pebble Beach remains intact.
Many of the initial objections to the February 2024 plan focused on its specifics. Some criticized the plan for not incorporating enough of the limestone blocks at the site. Others took issue with the use of angular cobbles in the new Pebble Beach, the use of concrete and manicured lawns, and the lack of access over the slope stone to the water for swimming. Some feared Pebble Beach would lose its secluded feeling in the proposed redesign.
Designs were tweaked and presented five more times over the last year and a half. Amended redesigns were again presented at the June meeting, which responded to many specific criticisms: it incorporated additional benches and bicycle racks, used only rounded stone in the new Pebble Beach and placed salvaged limestone blocks around the beach. It also created a natural area at 51st Street (instead of a lawn), expanded the previously proposed natural area at 47th Street and made access to Pebble Beach ADA compliant. And, in an effort to make the beach feel more secluded, designs also increased the height of the stepped revetment at Pebble Beach.
But several attendees at that June meeting said they still felt that their broader objections were not getting addressed.
“You’re saying, ‘Oh, you want more bike racks. We can give you that. You want more limestone blocks scattered on the beach. We can give you that,’” Egberts said. “We’re asking for the feeling of the place that we love … And instead of addressing that as a whole and having a design charrette and beginning this process anew, you’re beginning the NEPA anew.”
NEPA Review
More than 25 years since the Army Corps left Morgan Shoal revetment reconstruction to the city, the agency has begun writing the supplemental environmental assessment for the area.
A final design for the project will be based on the recommendations of that supplemental assessment, as well as public and stakeholder reviews of the assessment. After that, it needs the signature of the USACE’s top Chicago officer.
Samantha Belcik, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers biologist and planner, speaks speaks in the Kennicott Fieldhouse, 4434 S. Lake Park Ave., during the latest meeting for the Morgan Shoal redesign, June 24, 2025.
Marc C. Monaghan
Samantha Belcik, the NEPA review manager for the Army Corps, said at the June meeting that the public review process of the supplemental assessment and its recommendation would start during the third quarter of this year, giving people 45 days to submit feedback and comments.
This process too drew ire from attendees, who said they wanted to be part of the planning process from the beginning, not when the NEPA review is well underway.
“Why, after what we feel is a disingenuous community engagement, would we now turn around and participate in this NEPA?” asked Heather Belcher, a Hyde Park resident.
Belcik noted that the agency typically starts its NEPA review when designs are “sixty-percent complete.”
“If we were at the 15 or 30% we cannot accurately analyze those impacts on something that could change,” Belcik said. She added that it is “illegal” for the agency to conduct a NEPA review when plans are completely finalized.
Michael Padilla, the USACE project manager, reiterated the call for the community’s involvement in the supplemental review process.
“We’ve got to understand what those impacts are,” said Padilla. “Check out the draft SEA and see if we missed anything.”
“I know it’s not what you want to hear, but the shoreline is falling apart,” Padilla added. “We need to do something about it.”