Wrigley Party Deck Could Renew Talks of Connecting to CTA Platform

A new idea to float a deck connected to Wrigley Field over Sheffield Avenue has some Lake View officials thinking the idea will also resurrect talks to connect the ballpark directly the Addison CTA Red Line station.

Chicago Cubs spokesman Julian Green says the idea for the lofted deck came directly before City Council approved the team’s $500 million redevelopment plan a trade-off for eliminating the pedestrian bridge over Clark Street.

Wrigley Field’s outer wall has already been approved to move outward 8 feet onto Sheffield, so the patio would allow the 650-square-foot sign in right field to move closer to the Wrigley rooftops, no longer blocking views. The move would also lessen the chances rooftop owners would take the Cubs to court for blocking their views. 

“As part of that eleventh-hour discussion, the Wrigley rooftops pitched an idea of a patio over Sheffield, and we were open to trading the bridge over Clark Street to explore the patio over Sheffield,” Green said.

But now neighborhood officials say a deck that size could facilitate a connection to the El tracks. Lake View Citizens Council President Will DeMille says the idea was tossed around years ago as a way to shuffle fans directly into Wrigley Field rather than down Clark Street.

He added that the party deck over Sheffield got mixed reactions for LVCC’s members, with some wondering if it was just shifting the problem from Clark to the east side of the ballpark. But if the deck is being considered, so should the connection to the CTA.

“We talked about it before, connecting to the CTA platform, and how that might have a positive effect on pedestrian traffic,” DeMille said. “There really haven’t been concrete details, like we don’t know if the CTA will allow it to connect. … (But) I think it warrants a discussion if there’s an additional benefit of mitigating the pedestrian traffic.”

Ald. Tom Tunney’s (44th) Chief of Staff Bennett Lawson also said there may be interest in looking into a connection to the CTA platform. He says it would need to be vetted through the community, but questioned if it would help.

“The deck was one of those things that came up very last minute last week,” Lawson said. “We certainly weren’t going to commit to anything, but we are going to look at it. For a long time, connecting Wrigley Field right to the train (platform) was very popular, so I don’t know if we’re going back into that.

“Why don’t they just have a direct like to the train? I think the question is, would that really help?” Lawson continued. “Chicago isn’t really a city with a lot of pedestrian overpasses.”

Regardless of a connection to the CTA platform, the party deck over Sheffield is an appealing move to the Ricketts family, the rooftop owners and now Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

The mayor said in a press conference Tuesday that it’s an idea that seemingly pleased both parties, which means it’s something to look at.

"It was too soon to have shoehorned it into the planned development that City Council passed,” Emanuel said, according to the Chicago Tribune. “The alderman's going to run a community process. What I do note, which I thought was interesting given the usual rift that exists between the rooftops and the Ricketts, here's the one idea that the two of them agreed on, which stood out."