WILMETTE – A new baseball scoreboard at Northwestern’s Rocky Miller Park that drew ire from Wilmette residents was unanimously approved at the Evanston City Council meeting on Feb. 8.
While the item was removed from the meeting’s consent agenda, the scoreboard was passed with no discussion by the City Council. Charles Davidson, senior manager of construction projects for Northwestern, told the council that the university had doubled the landscaping around the park. The revised plan also includes transplanting mature trees from other parts of the campus.
The revised landscaping plan was described in a memorandum to the council dated Feb. 1 from Evanston’s departments of community development and zoning as follows:
“The revised landscape plan includes transplanting five deciduous trees ranging in caliper size from 3” – 11” and three evergreen trees ranging in caliper size from 6” – 12” that will be removed from other NU locations due to ongoing construction projects and installed along Isabella Street.”
Northwestern officials have argued that the landscaping and additional buildings being built around the baseball field will obscure most of the visibility of the scoreboard.
While no Wilmette residents spoke out against the project at the meeting, residents have been vocal at previous meetings of the Planning and Development Committee. Primarily residents have objected to the height and size of the scoreboard, which will be 24 feet tall by 36 feet wide and mounted 10 feet above the ground. They fear it is impossible to shield their view of the LED lighted video scoreboard with any type of landscaping. Here is a mock-up that the neighbors created:
This is a mockup image of the proposed scoreboard at Rocky Miller Field, provided by neighbor Laurel Sheffer.
Davidson said after the meeting that Northwestern planned to begin transplanting the trees as soon as possible.