Lightfoot unveils plans to honor Jean Baptiste Point DuSable
By FOX 32 Digital Staff
Published
Lightfoot announces new plans to honor Jean Baptiste Point DuSable
Lightfoot s proposal comes just one day after a vote was blocked to rename Lake Shore Drive to DuSable Drive.
CHICAGO - Mayor Lori Lightfoot has announced a new plan to honor Jean Baptiste Point DuSable.
DuSable, an African-American immigrant from Haiti founded the settlement that would later become the City of Chicago.
Her plan includes the development of DuSable Park, the commissioning of new public art projects, programming to create the DuSable Riverwalk, and the creation of an annual DuSable Festival.
According to the language of the initial ordinance, proposed in 2019, Lake Shore Drive would be renamed Jean Baptiste Point du Sable Drive from Hollywood Boulevard, located in the city’s Edgewater neighborhood on the North Side, to the South 71st Street merge on the South Side.
Moore later agreed to limit the proposal to Outer Lake Shore Drive from Hollywood to 67th, just impacting the city s harbors and not changing the addresses of businesses or residences along LSD.
But at an event just hours before the committee s vote, Mayor Lori Lightfoot presented an alternate proposal to honor DuSable: finishing a park named for him that had been tabled for decades and renaming the Chicago Riverwalk after him.
Published April 30, 2021 •
Updated on April 30, 2021 at 1:55 pm
Charlie Wojciechowski
A proposal to rename a stretch of Chicago s Lake Shore Drive is one step closer to reality after a City Council committee voted to approve the measure in a meeting that was contentious and at times profane.
The Chicago City Council Committee on Transportation met Thursday to consider an ordinance to rename a portion of Lake Shore Drive as Jean Baptiste Point du Sable Drive. Don t miss local breaking news and weather! Download our mobile app for iOS or Android and sign up for alerts.
The ordinance was initially introduced by 17th Ward Ald. David Moore and co-sponsored by several other Chicago City Council members to rename the iconic roadway after Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, who arrived in Chicago in 1790 and was likely the first permanent non-Native American settler of the area.
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