Caught in gears of Cook County government, generations-old gun club faces extinction
June 19, 2011
|By Erika Slife, Tribune reporter
Since the 1920s, the little beige house that sits alongside Interstate 57 in Markham has served as the headquarters of the Blue Park Gun Club, a small group of recreational shooters started by World War I veterans that’s now in its third generation of families.
Most weekends, dozens of members — more if the weather is nice, fewer if it’s not — gathered at the clubhouse to take aim at clay pigeons, 25 shots a turn. One of the enthusiasts, a restaurant chef, has been known to whip up escargot in the home’s bucolic kitchen; others pestered their 80-year-old president to take his pills. Old photos and Christmas cards hang on the walls.
This year, the shooting range is silent. The trap throwers, ready to spit out the circular, orange clay pigeons, are turned off. In the windows, signs warn: “No Shooting Allowed.”
The gun club finds itself caught in the gears of government. For decades, its longtime landlord, the Cook County Board, was OK with letting the hobbyists fire away. But now that the landlord is wearing a different hat, as the Cook County Forest Preserve District, the club’s use of the land is in jeopardy.
The group owns the land the clubhouse sits on, as well as the turf where the shooters stand. But since the 1960s, the club has had to lease the land that makes up the firing range from the Cook County Board. Back then, members were forced to move the house a few yards after the state took two-thirds of their small parcel as part of the interstate’s construction.
Last year, however, the County Board transferred the land to the County Forest Preserve District to make good on an old deal — an easy swap to make because county commissioners double as forest preserve commissioners. Suddenly, the shooting range, where members long ago planted trees and brush to muffle the echo of gunshots, was not a welcome amenity on forest preserve land.
New Forest Preserve District Superintendent Arnold Randall cited concerns about liability and setting precedents. Now Blue Park members are asking forest preserve commissioners to make an exception to the district’s policy of not leasing public land for private use. A resolution allowing the gun club to use the land narrowly passed out of committee, and the full board will consider the measure Thursday.
The gun club members are nervous.
“Nobody even knew we were here,” Joe Landgraf, 60, said during a recent tour of the property, where his father once served as president and where he now takes his own kids shooting.
“We don’t bother anybody, nobody bothers us,” added Ed Holmes, 63.
It’s not the first time the club has faced extinction. In 1967, the club thought its days were numbered as the interstate was being built. But it reached a deal with the county to lease 4.75 acres near Pulaski Avenue and the highway, land that had been used as a dumping ground for rebar, concrete and asphalt during construction.
For $30 a month, members were allowed to shoot clay pigeons on weekends and holidays. More recently, they could shoot only on Sundays, for $4,160 a year.
In the meantime, gun club members spruced up the acreage. They buried construction debris under grass, and reburied hunks of asphalt or concrete that popped out of the earth. They planted a variety of trees and shrubs along the perimeter of the firing range, paying from their own pockets to bring in soil to help the plants grow in the landfill-hard ground. Cleanup days were mandatory, held once a month to pick up shattered clay pigeons and ammunition casings in the shooting range.
The lease continued uninterrupted and under the radar until 2007.
That’s when a group of county commissioners demanded that the Forest Preserve District be compensated for $13 million that the county had transferred from the forest preserve budget to the county budget to help ease a shortfall. Ostensibly, the money was the repayment of a county transfer to the Forest Preserve District in 2001 and 2002, but there was no documentation detailing whether it was a loan, officials said.
So the County Board voted to transfer 176 acres of surplus county land surrounding Oak Forest Hospital to the Forest Preserve District. Amid that land, on the far eastern border, is the shooting range.
The county offered to sell the land to the gun club, but only as part of a 32-acre tract. The asking price of more than $1 million was well out of the gun club’s reach, said Charles Pavesich, a member and attorney for the club. “We are the meaning of ‘not-for-profit,'” Pavesich said.
So when the forest preserve took possession of the land, gun club members were notified that they were no longer permitted to shoot on the property as of Jan. 1.
“We’re not against people’s rights to bear arms or even go to ranges,” said Superintendent Randall, a former Marine. “But I think having a live-fire range in the forest preserve is an inappropriate use.”
Source: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-05-29/news/ct-met-cook-county-gun-club-20110529_1_shooting-range-clay-pigeons-county-commissioners
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