Maximize Oak Park's scarce recreational resources

Tuesday, February 14th, 2012 10:00 PM

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I attended the Ridgeland Common presentation on Feb. 9 and found it very interesting. I am excited that that facility will be renovated soon. After considering the comments expressed during the presentation, I feel there should be only one focus of the project, and that is to maximize the availability of scarce recreational resources — skating and swimming. Given that we do not have unlimited resources, all other aspects should be considered secondary and expendable. So I suggest these three goals for the project:

1) Maximize the area of ice — ideally two full-size rinks

2) Maximize the available ice time — ideally all year

3) Enclose the pool — allowing year-round swimming

If more area is necessary to achieve this, try these: remove parking, eliminate bleachers, eliminate multi-purpose rooms or make the lobby cramped.

If I have a choice between this — convenient parking, having lots of space to spectate, a nice game room, a spacious lobby, only three months of swimming, and only seven hours of public skating per week — versus having to walk a block or two, not being able to spectate at popular events, no game room, a cramped lobby, but having year-round swimming, year-round skating and open skating 15 hours per week, I'll pick the latter, and I'll bet most other Oak Parkers would too.

Kevin Shalla
Oak Park