The Lakefront Protection Ordinance exists for a reason

Montgomery Ward wasn't the hero Chicago wanted. He was a mail-order catalog tycoon who sued the city four times between 1890 and 1911 to stop buildings from going up on the lakefront. Critics called...

By Dear Kevin Warren · 2026-01-21

He won every single case.

Today, because Ward kept filing lawsuits nobody wanted to hear, Chicago has 26 miles of public shoreline instead of a wall of hotels and office towers. Grant Park exists. The museum campus exists. Soldier Field exists.

Ward understood something that politicians and developers keep forgetting: once you give away public land, you don't get it back.

What the ordinance actually does

Chicago's Lakefront Protection Ordinance was passed in 1973. It establishes a "lakefront protection district" running from Ardmore Avenue on the north to 71st Street on the south. Within that district, new construction faces special requirements: height limits, setback rules, mandatory public access provisions.

The ordinance reflects a legal principle that goes back even further: the public trust doctrine. Navigable waters and shorelines aren't ordinary property. They belong to the public. Government can regulate them, manage them, improve them. What government cannot do is give them away to private interests.

This isn't idealism or poetry. It's binding law. Courts have enforced it in Illinois for over a century. The lakefront dedication that created Grant Park, the Montgomery Ward decisions, the Burnham Plan's insistence on "forever open, clear, and free"... all of it has legal force.

When someone proposes a major project on lakefront land, they don't just need political approval. They need to demonstrate that the project serves public purposes, maintains public access, and doesn't fundamentally transfer control to private interests.

Why it matters now

The Bears want $2+ billion in public money for a lakefront stadium. Whether it's a dome at Soldier Field or some other configuration, any major project on that land triggers Lakefront Protection Ordinance review.

Here's what that means in practice:

The project must serve a public purpose. A stadium that primarily benefits a private franchise owned by a billionaire family raises questions. The 2003 renovation was approved partly because the Chicago Park District maintained ownership and the Bears remained tenants, not owners. Change that relationship and the legal analysis changes.

Public access must be preserved or enhanced. A dome that walls off the lakefront for private events wouldn't pass this test. Neither would a configuration that reduced public sight lines to the lake or created barriers to public movement.

The review isn't optional. Politicians can want something badly. Developers can lobby hard. But the ordinance creates a legal framework that exists independently of political will. Citizens can sue to enforce it.

Lawyers and philosophers both agree

The legal case is straightforward: the lakefront is protected. But there's also a philosophical case that matters.

Why do we protect public land at all? Because we learned the hard way what happens when we don't.

Look at other cities' waterfronts. In most American coastal cities, the shoreline is walled off by private development. Hotels, condos, office towers. The public gets narrow slivers of access, if anything. The waterfront belongs to whoever bought it first.

Chicago chose differently. The people who came before us fought to keep the lakefront public. They filed lawsuits and made enemies. They won.

That's the inheritance. Not just the parks and beaches and museums, but the principle behind them: some things belong to everyone. Not everything should be for sale.

The Lakefront Protection Ordinance is the legal embodiment of that philosophy. It says there are limits to what private interests can capture. It says some land serves purposes beyond profit.

When the Bears ask for public lakefront land for a stadium that primarily serves private revenue goals, they're testing that philosophy. They're asking whether the rules that applied to everyone else apply to them.

The 2003 precedent

People forget how contentious the 2003 Soldier Field renovation was. The project cost $632 million. It changed the stadium so dramatically that the National Park Service stripped its National Historic Landmark status.

Lawsuits challenged the project on exactly these grounds. Could the city essentially rebuild a stadium for a private tenant on dedicated lakefront land?

The challenges failed, but the court's reasoning matters. The stadium stayed publicly owned. The land stayed publicly dedicated. The Bears were tenants paying rent, not owners extracting value. The facility's public purpose, as a war memorial and civic gathering space, remained intact.

That reasoning becomes the test for any future proposal. Maintain public ownership? Preserve public access? Keep the Bears as tenants rather than owners? Then maybe the project survives legal review. Change those fundamentals and the lawsuits start.

What developers always say

Every developer who wants to build on protected land makes the same arguments:

"This is different." It never is.

"The economic benefits will be enormous." They never are. Studies consistently show stadium economic impact claims are inflated by factors of 5 to 10.

"It will serve the public good." Serving one billionaire family's revenue goals isn't the public good, no matter how you phrase it.

"We can make exceptions for important projects." The minute you start making exceptions, the protection becomes meaningless.

Montgomery Ward heard all these arguments. The people who wanted to build on Grant Park said their projects were important, their benefits were real, their plans were different. Ward kept suing anyway. He understood that the principle mattered more than any individual project.

The real question

The Bears' stadium push forces a question that goes beyond football: does Chicago still believe in the lakefront principle?

For over a century, the answer has been yes. Development pressure has been resisted. Private interests have been kept at bay. The shoreline has remained "forever open, clear, and free."

That principle has survived because people were willing to defend it. Lawyers filed suits. Citizens organized. Politicians who tried to give away lakefront land faced consequences.

The question now is whether this generation will do the same.

Kevin Warren isn't the first person to look at Chicago's lakefront and see dollar signs. He won't be the last. The ordinance exists because people like him keep coming.

Why I care

Look, I'm a Bears fan. I want the team to stay in Chicago and compete. I'd love a stadium that doesn't make me feel like I'm sitting inside a UFO.

But not at any cost. Not if it means giving away the lakefront. Not if it means the next generation inherits less than we did.

The people who protected this shoreline weren't Bears fans. Montgomery Ward didn't care about football. Daniel Burnham was thinking about a city, not a stadium. They fought for a principle that had nothing to do with sports.

That fight protected the land where Soldier Field sits. It's why the Bears play where they do: on public ground, connected to the parks and museums, part of the city.

If we abandon that principle to help the Bears build a dome, we haven't saved anything. We've just proven that everything is for sale if the price is high enough.

The ordinance exists for a reason

The Lakefront Protection Ordinance isn't a bureaucratic obstacle. It's the legal expression of a century of struggle to keep Chicago's shoreline public.

It exists because people fought for it. It has teeth because courts enforce it. Without the ordinance, the lakefront would look like every other waterfront in America: privatized, walled off, gone.

When the Bears ask for exceptions, when politicians talk about "flexibility," when developers claim their project is different, remember why the ordinance exists. Remember who fought for it. Remember what we inherited.

Some things aren't for sale. The lakefront is one of them. That's not obstruction. That's the whole point.