Erosion Along Northerly Island Has Closed Part Of Trail
(CBS) -- Northerly Island is 48 acres of nature that juts into Lake Michigan.
Instead of seeing flowers and birds, however, in many cases all you see are boulders. CBS 2's Roseanne Tellez reports.
Why was Northerly Island partially closed Monday on such a beautiful day?
The new $9 million trail opened to great fanfare just one year ago. But Monday, bicyclists and joggers were met by concrete barricades.
The East side of the mile-long trail is shut down, the ground beneath it simply sliding away.
"One day it was open. The next day it was closed, and you could see the erosion was compromising the structure of the walking path," Leah Kestal says.
"There's just a lot of fences that are half up, half down, and rocks all over the place. It just looks a little unkempt," Phil Pince says.
A notice on the Chicago Park District website says: "We are currently consulting with the Army Corps of Engineers to repair the erosion damage on the trail from winter weather."
Meantime, large boulders put up to stop the erosion block the lakefront view.
"As I see it today, it looks beautiful. I just hope they can find a way to fix it," Jack Keenan says.
Neither the park district nor the Army Corps of Engineers could tell CBS 2 when the park will be open or how much might cost to shore up the trail.
"I think anytime you decide to redo nature you're going to run into problems that you probably hadn't anticipated," Kestal says.
