Oak Park’s parks are not traveled lightly. A village of this size should have much more park space than it does, but given the resources it has, the Park District of Oak Park has been trying to keep each park in good shape.
It’s necessary to keep them maintained and modernized, says Gary Balling, the park district’s executive director.
“These things get used – hard,” Balling said in an interview last week at Wednesday Journal’s offices. “They’re never going to be totally done.”
But as the park district turns to the next decade, it’s wondering just how it should spend its limited cash, and it’s turning to the community for guidance later this month with a survey. Looming larger than any of its other parks is the park district’s most heavily-used facility: Ridgeland Common at Lake Street and Ridgeland Avenue.
With the village’s only ice rink packed onto a parcel of property with a pool, a dog park, a sledding hill, athletic fields and parking, Ridgeland Common has weathered the years since the pool facility was built in 1962.
But a 2007 study showed that Ridgeland was both physically and functionally obsolete, and the park district would need to pour a cost-prohibitive amount of cash into the current buildings over the next few years.
Simply providing enough repairs to make the building sustainable for the next 10 to 15 years would cost $10 million, according to the park district.
So the park district is taking the question to the people of Oak Park with a community survey that’s being mailed to 5,000 Oak Park households later this month. Amidst basic customer service inquiries, the park district is asking one key question: What should we do with Ridgeland?
The park district developed a number of plans for Ridgeland in 2008 that ranged in cost as high as $100 million. But with the pressures of the recession, the park board whittled those options down to a more manageable group, with the most expensive cited at $60 million.
The problem is that the park district only has about $14 million budgeted for Ridgeland’s improvement in its current capital improvement plan. Spending much more than that would disrupt park renovations across the rest of the village.
The park district has actively tried to use a balanced approach to renewing its parks since its Renew Our Parks referendum passed in 2005, scattering improvements across the village.
“We’re in a very different place than we were a few years ago,” said park board Commissioner Jessica Bullock, who worked on developing the survey. “Renovating what we have at Ridgeland is kind of a band-aid … but we’re really happy with the balanced approach.”
But three of the five options on the table for Ridgeland would disrupt that balanced approach. Renovating the existing facility would come in under budget, but would leave a patchwork facility in place for a new generation to deal with just a few years down the road.
New construction, however, would be expected to last another 50 years – as the original facility did.
One of those options would come in under budget – a $14 million facility that would involve building a new Ridgeland with a new pool, but no ice rink.
A new Ridgeland with an ice rink, but no pool, would run the park district $20 million and would disrupt other plans a bit.
Rebuilding both an ice rink and a pool would cost $30 million, and would disrupt most other park renovations. It would also require the park district to ask the public for permission to take on more debt in a referendum.
The biggest plan would cost $60 million, and would include a pool, an ice rink, a gymnasium, fitness facilities and other amenities. It would disrupt all other major park renovations, and would require the park district to go to referendum to take on more debt and increase property taxes.
With so many options on the table, the park district is counting on the community survey for guidance. At a recent park board meeting, commissioners worried about Oak Parkers not providing enough direction in the survey – abdicating their opinion on the Ridgeland question by choosing the sixth option, “not sure.”
In that situation, survey subcommittee member Dick McKinlay said, the park district should take charge and do what it feels is the right thing.
It’s a delicate dance, though. McKinlay said the park board doesn’t take these big decisions without agonizing over them, and people respect them for that.
“The park district doesn’t do anything lightly without gathering community input,” McKinlay said. “There’s tremendous regard and respect for them because of that.”
CONTACT: bmeyerson@wjinc.com
