A volunteer group known for picking up trash across Chicago has spent more than a year and roughly $20,000 turning two vacant lots in Englewood into a small park — and now they're fighting to keep illegal dumpers from wrecking it. Caterpillar Park, at 6316 and 6318 S. Sangamon St., opened in April with raised garden beds, native prairie plants and a brick path, but organizers say piles of dumped landscaping debris have turned up on the property.
The group behind it, Litter Caterpillars, started as a Sunday cleanup crew founded by Kevin Tao before expanding into full-scale park building, according to Block Club Chicago. Tao got his start organizing a cleanup day at Chicago's Museum Campus before pooling time and money with fellow founders David Bippes, Krist Pregracke and Michael Lane to launch the group's broader mission. The team went on to lead the 50 Ward Challenge, an effort to complete 50 trash pickups across all 50 Chicago wards in 50 weeks, before noticing that much of the litter they were collecting kept accumulating in the city's vacant lots.
That observation led the founders to a much bigger idea: buy a vacant lot themselves and turn it into a park. According to the Chicago Tribune, the opportunity came through a citywide land auction announced in early 2025 and organized by investment company Hilco, which included more than 800 vacant parcels across the South and West sides. Litter Caterpillars members bid on two adjacent lots and won them for $10,000, receiving ownership of the roughly 6,200-square-foot property that spring.
From Weeds to a Neighborhood Green Space
Converting the site wasn't cheap or quick. The Tribune's report notes the group has spent another $10,000 to date on improvements including plants, mulch and landscaping, on top of the original purchase price — all funded, according to the same account, by Litter Caterpillars volunteers or organizers. Volunteers used donated burlap sacks to lay mulch and grow native flowers, and the finished park now includes raised garden beds where tomatoes grow alongside prairie grasses and yellow coneflowers that draw birds and monarch butterflies.
The site also has a shed for tools and supplies, and organizers have installed lights along the brick path that park leaders are now paving through the space. Those lights have already been targeted by thieves, and Caterpillar Park's leaders say they are working to replace the stolen fixtures. Per the group's own website, Litter Caterpillars has also purchased solar panels and custom fixtures for the property, all funded so far by the organizers themselves rather than outside grants.
Illegal Dumping Threatens the Progress
Despite the work, Caterpillar Park has struggled with repeated illegal dumping at the site since it opened, the Tribune reports. The recurring piles of debris have raised a harder question for the group and for outside observers: how the park can be sustained long-term, amid concerns about outside groups entering the neighborhood and the fact that the founders are mostly from the North Side, according to the same Tribune account.
Bippes has pushed back on the idea that the park is disconnected from the neighborhood it sits in. He said the group wants Englewood residents to feel that Caterpillar Park belongs to them, and has described the space as something more than a garden — a green gathering and reflection spot where people can heal. Tao, for his part, has said the group's very first cleanup was difficult but ultimately became a fond memory, a sentiment that has carried into the harder work of maintaining the park against dumpers.
Residents Get a Say in What Comes Next
The Litter Caterpillars crew shows up at the park itself every Sunday from 9 to 11 a.m., per the Tribune's reporting. The group says it plans to keep talking with Englewood residents about what the space should include next and what would actually be useful in the neighborhood — organizers are already working with nearby residents and community leaders on programming for the site.
That outreach got a boost last month, when Litter Caterpillars co-hosted an “Alderman in the Park” event with Ald. Stephanie Coleman, who represents the 16th Ward covering the park's location, according to Bippes. The gathering reportedly drew about 100 neighbors, who told organizers they'd like to see swings, a bench and a space to grill and gather added to the site. Caterpillar Park is also sponsored by Neueve, Kevin Tao's family business, and its leaders say they are applying for grants to help sustain the project going forward.
Organizers hope neighbors will eventually pick vegetables and learn gardening at the park, though they've said that goal depends on stronger local involvement taking root. For now, the founders describe their broader aim simply: bringing together Chicagoans from different neighborhoods around another patch of green space on the South Side, even as they keep watch for the next pile of dumped debris.
