ComEd, Openlands Award $10,000 to Glen Ellyn Park District for Protecting Green Space

ComEd and Openlands awarded $125,000 in Green Region grants to 17 municipalities and nonprofits throughout northern Illinois to support their continuing efforts to conserve and protect open spaces. Many municipal and nonprofit budgets are stretched thin and U.S. cities face falling revenues for a sixth-straight year in the current economic climate, according to the National League of Cities (Sept. 12, 2013), which makes these grants even more important.

A Green Region grant of $10,000 was awarded to the Glen Ellyn Park District and their Ackerman Park access from the Great Western Trail project. This project will construct an ADA-compliant, crushed limestone, 140-linear-foot trail extension connecting Ackerman Park in Glen Ellyn to the Great Western Trail. This trail extension is marked as a high priority for both Glen Ellyn Park District and DuPage County (included in the Regional Bikeway Plan). Currently, several unauthorized and hazardous foot paths exist from years of visitors attempting to find access between the Great Western Trail and the park. A trail connection would ensure safe passage between the two areas and would make the area ADA-accessible.

This is the first year of the Green Region program in Illinois, a joint effort by ComEd and Openlands to fund municipal conservation and environmental projects. The Green Region grants relieve some of the financial strain faced by numerous municipalities and nonprofit organizations forced to make significant cuts to environmental programs due to budget constraints. The grants subsidize existing open space projects at the municipal level focusing on conservation, preservation, protecting endangered species, and improvements to local parks and recreation resources. Each grant applicant was eligible for a maximum of $10,000 per project.

Openlands, a Chicago-based nonprofit focused on land conservation, is administering the Green Region program. Municipalities and nonprofits throughout northern Illinois submitted their applications for a Green Region grant earlier this year. The applications were reviewed by an advisory committee of local environmental leaders selected by ComEd and Openlands.

The grants will be distributed by ComEd over the next two years. Openlands will monitor the 17 projects by developing applications, guidelines and a scorecard to track and measure the impact of each project.