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Three people were jailed this week for taking part in a scheme that funneled Chicago Park Districts?EUR??,,????'??? contracts worth over $8 million to a suburban landscaping company. The three included a former Chicago Park District official and two landscaping executives. The payoffs were for various sites, including $1.3 million in contracts for Chicago?EUR??,,????'???s downtown lakefront Millenium Park. Millennium Park was the high point of Richard M. Daley?EUR??,,????'???s city beautification effort and considered one of the Chicago?EUR??,,????'???s most ambitious public architectural projects. Shirley McMayon, the Chicago Park district?EUR??,,????'???s former natural resources director, was sentenced to 34 months of federal prison after admitting to accepting cash, vacations, and other payoffs for steering the contracts to the James Michael Landscaping Company, based in Mundelein, Ill. Its former executive, John Kevin Haas, was sentenced to 20 months in prison, and executive Michael Lowecki received 46 months after he rejected former cooperation deals that could have led to up to five years in jail. Some of their gifts to McMayon included arranging vacations at a Wisconsin resort and buying a computer for her child. The judge for the case, David H. Coar said such bribery was unfair to everyone involved. “It’s an invitation to turn the whole system into a cesspool,” he said. Source: The Chicago Tribune
Three people were jailed this week for taking part in a scheme that funneled Chicago Park Districts?EUR??,,????'??? contracts worth over $8 million to a suburban landscaping company. The three included a former Chicago Park District official and two landscaping executives. The payoffs were for various sites, including $1.3 million in contracts for Chicago?EUR??,,????'???s downtown lakefront Millenium Park. Millennium Park was the high point of Richard M. Daley?EUR??,,????'???s city beautification effort and considered one of the Chicago?EUR??,,????'???s most ambitious public architectural projects.
Shirley McMayon, the Chicago Park district?EUR??,,????'???s former natural resources director, was sentenced to 34 months of federal prison after admitting to accepting cash, vacations, and other payoffs for steering the contracts to the James Michael Landscaping Company, based in Mundelein, Ill. Its former executive, John Kevin Haas, was sentenced to 20 months in prison, and executive Michael Lowecki received 46 months after he rejected former cooperation deals that could have led to up to five years in jail. Some of their gifts to McMayon included arranging vacations at a Wisconsin resort and buying a computer for her child.
The judge for the case, David H. Coar said such bribery was unfair to everyone involved. “It’s an invitation to turn the whole system into a cesspool,” he said.
Source: The Chicago Tribune
Francisco Uviña, University of New Mexico
Hardscape Oasis in Litchfield Park
Ash Nochian, Ph.D. Landscape Architect
November 12th, 2025
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