What the park board finally conceded at the River Forest Service Club forum last week is that the $8 million referendum is not about building a recreational facility the community needs, but about a facility the park board wants. By saying that, the park board is abandoning the long-held mission of the River Forest Park District in favor of a new better “vision.”
For nearly 20 years, the mission of the park district has been “to acquire, develop and preserve recreational open space and park facilities” and to cooperate “with other governmental agencies, community-based organizations and local private institutions to develop and maintain sports programs, recreational activities, leisure services and park facilities.” More and better open space, cooperative use of existing and future indoor facilities. Easy to say, often difficult to achieve.
The park board’s desire for its own building, while perhaps laudable, needs to further this mission. Before we give the park district what amounts to a blank check for the purchase and acquisition of the Oilily building, we need to ask: Is this where we need to go, in light of where we’ve been?
It is hard to see why we need yet another gym facility when the park board has canceled more than 40 hours of gym time at the River Forest Community Center since November of 2009. Why can’t they sponsor Friday “open gym nights” for teens and preteens? They canceled two-hour and three-hour blocks of time on three consecutive Fridays in early December at that same facility. Do we need an indoor walking track when an existing one at Dominican University goes underused? Does the park board really expect to generate $66,000 annually in user fees from a 1,400-square-foot “fitness center” with no shower facilities? There are four or five health clubs with much better equipment and amenities, and more extensive programming, within a few minutes’ drive for most residents. If you attended last week’s forum, you heard a lot more questions without good answers.
More to the point, will the recent scaled-back design concept result in the improved recreational options the park board is really after? Commissioners’ laudable goal – a “better community gathering space” – is not going to be achieved with a facility that has inadequate parking for what they really say they want to create. This last-ditch compromise – dictated by the growing resistance and compelled by the village zoning code – will only frustrate the park board and future users. Will River Forest be stuck with an $8 million facility that residents don’t use and the park district didn’t really want in the first place?
Without a clear need for yet another recreational facility, or a more realistic explanation of how the park board expects the Oilily building to satisfy that need, how can we tell whether this proposal advances the park district’s mission? Upon a closer look, it does little to advance the mission, and comes with a big price tag. That’s why I’m urging River Forest residents to vote no on Feb. 2.
Patrick Deady served as an elected commissioner of the River Forest Park District from May 1995 through April 2001 and served as president of the board from May 1999 through April 2001, during the time River Forest voters approved two referendums, one to acquire Washington Commons and another to renovate Keystone Park.