Chicago Park District chief suggests lottery for summer day camp slots

Newly appointed Chicago Park District Supt. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa on Thursday suggested an annual lottery to eliminate the fierce competition among parents for coveted summer camp slots.

Jettisoning the "Hunger Games"-like exercise Chicago parents have had to endure to get their kids into summer day camps was one of the marching orders that Ramirez-Rosa got from Mayor Brandon Johnson.

The long-ago switch from paper to online applications made it a little bit easier for families to sign up their kids, but it created another set of problems.

“Now what we’re dealing with is families having to wake up early in the morning, hop on a laptop, hop on a computer and refresh that page as they compete with other parents to be able to get coveted spots in our Chicago Park District summer day camps,” Ramirez-Rosa said Thursday.

Ramirez-Rosa's first day on the job was April 1, just two weeks before camp registration began. It was too late to make any changes for this summer.

Next year will be different. After an internal assessment and family input, improvements will be made to “make it easier for parents to register” and make the competition “more fair and equitable for everyone,” said Ramirez-Rosa, former dean of the City Council's Socialist Caucus.

“Instead of having everyone get up at the same time, and everyone jump on the computer and try and sign up all at once, you could have a longer lead time where people can put in their top choices and then, on a certain day, you conduct a lottery, and people are notified whether or not they got the spot. That is one way to structure it,” Ramirez-Rosa said.

“We’re going to look at what are our options. ... Once we’ve gone through our internal assessment, once we’ve engaged the public, we will have a good plan in place to execute for 2026,” he said.

Traditional summer camps are often not enough to entice youths who have become bored or disenchanted with the lack of recreational opportunities in their neighborhoods and gather downtown in large groups that at times turn violent.

Those so-called “teen takeovers” prompted 2nd Ward Ald. Brian Hopkins to renew his demand for an 8 p.m. curfew for unaccompanied minors in the downtown area. He revised his proposal to include “snap curfews” on the fly anywhere in the city where police deem it necessary to disperse groups of “20 or more.”

For those disengaged youths, the park district will test an e-sports camp this summer at West Pullman Park.

“It’s going to include gaming experiences. But it’s also going to have a fitness component ... and a teamwork component as well,” Ramirez-Rosa said. “It’s not just going to be kids sitting down and playing games by themselves in a room together.”

Ramirez-Rosa also breathed new life into the seemingly comatose plan to merge the Jackson Park and South Shore golf courses into a single championship course.

“It’s a very exciting plan. ... I have had a few conversations around being able to link the golf courses ... and be able to do that along the lakefront. Some individuals have dreamed of a PGA course. There continues to be interest in that plan,” Ramirez-Rosa said.

“There is a cost associated with building that out. ... There are some individuals who are ... thinking that through, some external partners interested in seeing if they can’t raise the money to help make that dream possible. That is to be determined if those dollars pan out,” he said.

The golf course merger gained momentum when former President Barack Obama chose Jackson Park for his presidential center. But it stirred controversy because the design by a firm founded by golf superstar Tiger Woods' firm would require closing Marquette Drive, building a pair of new underpasses, displacing tennis courts and moving the South Shore Nature Sanctuary to make way for a new 12th hole.

The underpasses alone at 67th Street and South Shore Drive, and at Jeffery Boulevard and 66th Street, cost $30 million — as much as the price tag for the new course.

In 2017, the park district signed a 10-year agreement with a nonprofit co-founded by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel's former campaign manager to spearhead what was then a $30 million plan to merge the two golf courses into a single, championship-caliber course as part of the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park.

The agreement, signed in 2016, called for the Chicago Parks Golf Alliance to be the "sole fundraising entity" for the project and "work in partnership with the Park District for the fundraising, implementation and construction of agreed upon master plans."

The contract set timelines and fundraising goals, nearly all of which have never been met.