I attended the 2012 Cubs Community Meeting, held at the Chicago 23rd District Police Station, on Monday evening. I had the pleasure of sitting next to Ballhawk. Here is some information from the meeting.

Before I begin, there was a game time change announcement. The game time listed for Monday, April 9th has been changed. It is listed as a 7:05PM start. That game is now a 6:05PM start time.

I'll begin with what is going on at the McDonald's parking lot. Mike Lufrano, Vice President, Community Affairs, General Counsel, wanted to make it clear that the McDonald's property was acquired by the Ricketts family and not by the Chicago Cubs. At this time, there are no long range plans for the property. The plan for this season is for a merchandise tent to be set up in the parking lot. For now, the McDonald's restaurant will remain in place.

As far as the triangle building project, in the parking lot just west of Wrigley Field along Clark Street, that project is on hold. The first priority is for Wrigley Field to be worked on. In addition, the economic climate is holding backing any development of the triangle project. It was mentioned that any future project will likely have less parking than the original plans. Due to community input, it wasn't desirable to add more parking to the already congested Clark/Addison intersection. It was also brought up that the privately financed development, just south of Addison, is also on hold due the economic climate. This is the hotel/retail complex that will be displacing a number of bars and restaurants along the east side of Clark Street. It was mentioned that Hyatt was rumored to be involved with managing the hotel portion of the project.

The Cubs will hold block parties during two homestands. Both will take place in the parking lot, at Clark and Waveland. No streets will be close, due to community feedback. They will take place on June 12-17th and on July 27-29th.

In addition to the already announced concerts on June 8th and 9th, Mike Lufrano could not yet confirm rumors about other concerts on Sept 7th and 8th. He wouldn't deny them either.

Mike Lufrano did announce that the Secretary General of NATO is interested in throwing out the first pitch, sometime during the NATO summit taking place in Chicago. This could take place during the May 18-20th White Sox series.

The Chicago Police 19th (Belmont) and 23 (Town Hall) districts will be consolidated, effective March 4th. Presently, the Wrigley Field area is serviced by both districts. Presently, Clark Street is the dividing line between the 19th and 23rd. Under the changes, all of the area will be in the new 19th district. Wrigley Field will be in Beats 1923 and 1924. The new 19th district will be located at the current 23rd district station, at 850 W Addison, and use the Town Hall district name.

Here are some facts and figures released by various city department representative, and by the Cubs. Most of the numbers are for night games only. Not sure about which ones.

48 Traffic Aides Deployed

21 Arrests

100 Administrative Notices

19 Moving Violations

1093 Parking Tickets

615 Tows

46,109 Cars used the remote parking

308 Average number of cars using remote parking

515 Highest number of cars using remote parking

6063 Bicycles using valet parking service

41% Fans using CTA

15,000 Persons using the skating ring

8,000 Runners in the Wrigley Fun Run

8,000 Attended movie night

I think I touched on the main points that would be of interest to those on this site. Other topics involved trash pickup, parking enforcement, calls to neighborhood hotline, traffic light timing, peddling, noise, parking, parking and parking. Oh, and officials promised to enforce the bus idling issue. That got a reaction out of Ballhawk. A sarcastic reaction, that is.