Snow From Downtown Streets Dumped in Lions Park

Normally, Lions Park is filled with people for Alpine Fest, baseball players or candy canes and kids for the annual candy cane hunt. However, if you haven’t noticed, right now it’s filled with snow.

That’s because the Alpine Lions Club donated the use of its park to the Village of Lake Zurich to help save time and money in the snow clearing efforts after the Feb. 1 and 2, blizzard that dumped  about 18 inches of snow throughout town.

“I just hope it all melts before July, otherwise we’ll have toboggan runs at Alpine Fest,” said Footloose Frank, Lions Club event coordinator and past president.

“Yes, they did provide us space in their parking lot to store the snow from downtown and we are greatly appreciative,” said David Heyden, director of public works/village engineer.  “We typically would haul this snow about a quarter-mile down Lions drive to our old public works yard.”

The old public works yard is near homes and because downtown snow removal was completed during the night to avoid conflicts with business and traffic, it would have disturbed the residences, according to Heyden.  

“The Lions club presented us with an opportunity to store the snow in a closer location with no impact to residences,” said Heyden. “I am sure the clean up effort took less time due to the close proximity of the storage site but it would be difficult to put a dollar value on how much, although I am sure there is one.”