Phillips Park, Long Grove great places to be
According to more than 8,000 online voters, Aurora's Phillips Park and the Shops of Long Grove are two of the greatest places to be.
From Aug. 10. to Sept. 14., Chicago's Metropolitan Planning Council solicited online votes for its "What Makes Your Place Great?" photo and video contest. More than 50 public places in the city and suburbs, including gardens, public plazas and walking trails, were nominated.
A photo of Aurora's Phillips Park, taken by city spokeswoman Amy Roth, garnered enough votes to win the People's Choice photo award. And a video shot and submitted Ami Shah of Green Courte Partners LLC, which owns a large portion of the retail facilities in Long Grove, won the People's Choice Video Award.
"The response to this contest has been amazing and reinforced just how important great public places are to the quality of our lives," said Karin Sommer, Placemaking Chicago project manager for the MPC. "Chicagoland is a vibrant, attractive place thanks in part to all of the places nominated in the 'What Makes Your Place Great?' contest."
Roth was motivated to submit her photo of Phillips Park by memories of watching her children play there and the other folks she's seen enjoy the walking trails and flower gardens during the last 25 years.
"The response to the photo has been great as people have begun reminiscing about what they love about the park, and it's gotten former residents also talking about their Phillips Park memories," said Roth, who campaigned for votes for the photo on social networking sites and city e-mail lists. "I really promoted this because I think being a great place is a great designation for Aurora."
In Long Grove, Shah said she chose to submit a video so she wouldn't be forced to focus on only one aspect of the shopping district's cobblestone paths or historic buildings.
"Long Grove is a great place, and as soon as we heard about the contest we immediately thought it should be considered," Shah said. "But I chose video because I had to capture the Long Grove experience and I don't know what one photo I would choose."
Shah also launched a local campaign and got everyone in town got involved.
"Merchants linked to the contest on their Web sites and sent the link to their customer mailing lists," she said. "We really spread the word."
A committee of planning experts also selected two Chicago locations, Bush Community Garden of Hope and Drake Garden in Albany Park, as the Grand Prize winners.
All four winners will receive their prizes and have the opportunity to talk about the history of their favorite places and what they mean to them and their communities at a round-table luncheon on Wednesday, Oct. 28, from noon to 1:30 p.m. at MPC's office, 140 S. Dearborn, Suite 1400, Chicago.
<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <div style="display:none"> </div> <!-- By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C found at http://corp.brightcove.com/legal/terms_publisher.cfm. --> <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://admin.brightcove.com/js/BrightcoveExperiences.js"></script> <object id="myExperience41503635001" class="BrightcoveExperience"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /> <param name="width" value="300" /> <param name="height" value="255" /> <param name="playerID" value="18011347001" /> <param name="publisherID" value="1659832549"/> <param name="isVid" value="true" /> <param name="@videoPlayer" value="41950572001" /> </object> <!-- End of Brightcove Player --> </ul> <h2>Related links</h2> <ul class="moreWeb"> <li><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/metroplanning/3795789444/in/set-72157621963325432">Aurora's Phillips Park</a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>