EAST CHICAGO | BP will have to look elsewhere than the city's north side for land to use as a staging area for the planned $3.8 billion expansion of its Whiting Refinery.

The East Chicago Waterway Management District, owner of the 53 acres just north of MacArthur Park sought by BP for parking and machinery assembly, recently declined the London-based refiner's offer to lease the property for five years.

The area is zoned for recreation, and the city plans to expand the MacArthur Park golf course there, despite soil and groundwater contamination from years of petroleum refining at a nearby former Sinclair Oil facility and an estimated 70,000 feet of abandoned pipelines just below the surface.

BP proposed to install a groundwater cleanup system at the site and, after the refinery expansion is completed in 2013, to remove the polluted soil and prepare the property for open-space uses.

Fernando Trevino, consulting engineer for the waterway district, said the time frame for the project was too long and district directors want the property to be cleaned up as soon as possible.

BP already has multiyear leases to use city property along Indiana Harbor Drive and Dickey Road as parking lots and staging areas for the refinery expansion project.