River Forest Township has set an Aug. 31 deadline for the River Forest Community Center to resolve alleged breaches in the contract between them.
The township government doubles as the governing body for the River Forest Civic Center Authority, the longtime owner of the building at Madison Street and Thatcher in the village. The township also leases space in the center for its offices.
A contentious public meeting July 15 included extended public comments from parents with children in the community center’s daycare program and other supporters of the center who were critical of the elected township officials positions.
John Becvar, River Forest Township supervisor and head of the civic center authority board, said it had extended its deadline from July 31 to Aug. 31 hoping to resolve differences.
The township is threatening to terminate the community center’s lease of the building for allegedly “entering into (sublease) agreements without approval and failing to provide required reporting” to the civic center authority.
Dick Chappell, the community center’s longtime executive director, said the relationship between the center and the civic center authority “has never been challenging until recently.” He said he was optimistic the situation could be resolved after a meeting last week. However, he disputed the township/civic center leaders position that there is something untoward in the multiple subleases it has in place.
Those leases include long term space rental to both Opportunity Knocks, a nonprofit working with individuals with developmental delays, and Oak Park and River Forest High School, which has operated CITE, its program for life skills training for young people who have aged out of high school but require state mandated support.
Also at issue are other subleases to entities which provide enrichment services to the center’s daycare students as well as to the public within the center’s space.
Becvar said officials formally notified the center of its alleged breaches via email in March and allotted the center 60 days to respond and resolve the issues. He said they failed to do so.
What followed was a chain of stormy events. At the authority’s May public meeting, its Board of Managers voted to end its agreement with the center if the two parties could not reach a mutual solution by July 31.
Chappell said the center has a lease management agreement with the township/civic center authority which runs through June 30, 2028.
Becvar said the township/authority met with the center late last week and outlined five possible pathways forward.
“We asked to work through the issues that we have, and we’re having a really hard time working with them to get to the point,” Becvar said. “Obviously, we want to work with the community center. We would welcome them to work with us if we could find a way for everyone to be in the building in the long term.”
Becvar’s view of the current subleases is that they were made without the approval of the civic center authority as the owner of the building. That is in breach of the existing contract, he said.
Becvar said the center was expected to cancel, effective June 30, 2023, all prior and future lease agreements. As of that date, the Opportunity Knocks sublease ended and the center entered into a month-to-month arrangement with the local nonprofit, which Becvar said was not presented to the authority. He also said the center did not have a payment for space relationship with OPRF.
Chappell said that for many years the center and the high school had a non-cash reciprocal agreement in which OPRF held the CITE program at the center while the center operated the childcare program at OPRF.
Becvar said the authority first received the proposed Opportunity Knocks lease and the OPRF lease via email from Chappell on Feb. 17, 2025. However, he said, the authority did not provide verbal or written approval for the center to enter into either agreement and at the March 2025 authority board meeting, officials voted unanimously to not allow the center to enter into the Opportunity Knocks lease. Despite this vote, the center reportedly collected further rent payments from Opportunity Knocks for April and May 2025.
OPRF has now terminated its sublease agreement and is moving out of the building by July 31, 2025 to a new location in Forest Park. Meanwhile, Opportunity Knocks is working with the authority to create a new lease agreement for the future.
Also housed in the building is the center’s early childhood and before and after school programs.
Sagar Upadhyaya and Stacey Hultgren recently moved to River Forest and their two children are in the center’s daycare. They are concerned about the future of the center’s childcare program and what the current confusion means for their children, Upadhyaya said. Hultgren attended the public meeting July 15 and said it was “palpable” in the meeting “how passionate people are about the center.
“I would love to see them come to a resolution and allow for their community center to remain within the building, because losing that resource, to us personally, would be a massive disruption in our day to day, in terms of childcare. But based on what I heard being at that meeting, it would be a massive disruption to the community as a whole,” Hultgren said. “I just want to see the community center remain a vibrant part of this community.”
Becvar said the authority values and appreciates the center’s early childhood programming and that they recognize that it has a “great” early childhood program.
The authority also found that the center was in breach of its agreement by failing to provide contractually required reporting to the authority on the building’s operations and finances. The authority estimates that $5 million in capital repairs will be necessary over the next three to five years to replace the leaking roof and dated HVAC system and update the building’s fire detection and suppression system, alarms and security system, interior bathrooms and parking lot.
Though taxpayers do not currently fund the building, aside from the monthly rent the township pays to the center for its own office space, there are active discussions taking place to merge the authority into the township so taxpayer money can be used to supplement the building’s rental income and support any necessary repairs. The authority is also in discussion with current and prospective tenants about what capital contributions they can make.
In the meantime, Becvar said the Authority has asked the Community Center to meet on a weekly basis and that they are “hopeful” that the two groups can reach a mutual agreement that allows the center to stay in the building ahead of the next public meeting taking place August 19.
“We have a statutory obligation to follow certain laws, and we have a contract with them that they have repeatedly breached, and we need to preserve our rights, because we expect in the near future that we are going to have to inject taxpayer dollars into the building to save the building,” Becvar said.
Chappell said the nonprofit community center has always been self-sustaining and operates without taxpayer support. “We are self-supporting. Everything has to make economic sense for us. If we were in the dire straits some suggest we’d be out of business.”
