Get the latest news from around Illinois.
Chicago Tribune: Battle brewing over Obama Center replacement parkland
Chicagoans are owed parkland for some of the acres in Jackson Park where the Obama Presidential Center will be located, and three park group are rejecting the claim by the Obama Foundation, City of Chicago and Chicago Park District that closing and digging up Cornell Drive in the park should count as a replacement.
Friends of the Parks executive director Juanita Irizarry told the Chicago Sun-Times, “Upon hearing a few years ago of the plans for the OPC in a park and the Obama Foundation’s commitment to a park positive outcome, Chicagoans envisioned more than what we seem to be getting. We expected new parks to be created in the community, not just a reconfiguration of the spaces and uses within the current boundaries of Jackson Park.”
Chicago Sun-Times: 167 Illinois prisoners serving life sentences for crimes committed as juveniles
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled six years ago that sentencing schemes that require life sentences with no hope of parole for crimes committed by juveniles violate the U.S. Constitution. Yet in Illinois, more than 160 prisoners are serving sentences that will likely leave them to die in prison for crimes they committed as juveniles, with virtually no hope of parole or early release under current law.
Those prisoners, identified through an Injustice Watch review of state records, remain locked up no matter how much they show remorse or produce evidence that they have been rehabilitated from the crimes they committed in their youth.
Daily Herald: 8 years?!? Behemoth Tri-State widening project about to begin
Up to 213,500 cars and trucks a day to work around. Irate residents. Thirty-two bridges teeming with traffic. Multiple railroads and the second-busiest airport in the nation to circumnavigate.
And for drivers, possibly eight years of jackhammers and construction backups.
Northwest Herald: Crystal Lake OKs renting cars to save $3.5M
There is a sweet spot in a car’s life, Finance Director George Koczwara said.
A car is optimal until its age causes maintenance costs to rise, a curve Crystal Lake officials will take on with a new citywide fleet rental program for all city and police vehicles.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch: SIU system faces potential split as campuses clamor for funds
Mathematics professor Marcus Agustin spends a lot of time inside the student fitness center at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, but he’s no gym rat.
Agustin and other faculty have been crammed in the gym facility for four years while waiting for construction on new classrooms and offices to be finished. The process was supposed to take two years, but Illinois state budget cuts doubled the time frame.
The Southern: As SIU Carbondale lost its party school rap, did enrollment suffer?
For decades, Southern Illinois University Carbondale held a distinction that many of its administrators worked to quash: it was considered one of the best party schools in the Midwest.
With a vibrant downtown entertainment scene and a prevalent drinking culture, the Carbondale campus drew fun-seekers far and wide, and in 1987, Playboy magazine ranked SIUC 17th on its list of the top 40 party schools in the country.