At their meeting Tuesday night, the Park District of Oak Park was slated to review the issue of what to do with Ridgeland Common, an inquiry that has plagued the organization for years.
New repair issues continue to pop up faster than the park district can address them, and the deterioration of the building at Ridgeland Common, which houses the indoor ice arena, is extremely costly to address.
At an April board meeting, the park district commissioners voted to enlist contractors from the Nagle Hartray Architecture firm to develop two different concepts for the structure, based on input from a community survey administered in 2010.
The meeting last night occurred after Wednesday Journal’s deadline, but park district commissioners and staffers said in advance that the options constitute a forward step in the plan to keep Ridgeland Common functional and efficient.
One possible scenario up for consideration includes tearing down the building and starting from scratch. The other option is to renovate and repair the existing structure.
“It’s really the culmination of a lot of years of planning and meetings,” said park district board President Marty Bracco, noting that the Ridgeland Common discussion began some four years ago, and many different options have been presented during that time. “We’re excited about possibly starting to see some of these things come to fruition,” Bracco said.
But no final decisions were expected at the Tuesday night meeting. In fact, Diane Stanke, manager of communications, said they don’t yet have a solid timeline for when the final decision will be made.
“These are very preliminary concepts,” she said of the Tuesday night drawings. And cost projections won’t be included.
“The board will look at the two concepts, the new building versus the renovation concept, and based on their feedback, then we would go to pricing,” said Executive Director Gary Balling.
The plan, he said, is for Nagle Hartray to come back to the board with cost estimates in October.
Bracco said he hoped Tuesday’s meeting would help the board figure out what can reasonably be done within the site limitations at Ridgeland Common, and give the contractors some direction moving forward.
The board doesn’t yet know what the grand total will be, but Bracco said they’ve already begun planning for it.
“Through our capital planning process, we’ve designated budgeted funds for going forward to do something like this,” he said, adding that the board will also be considering some low-rate bond financing opportunities.
“The idea is it will be done without increasing taxes,” Bracco said.