For years, the common wisdom has been that the River Forest Park District needs indoor recreational space. A community survey taken two years ago confirmed that suggesting facility that would include a new gymnasium with basketball courts, a walking track and programming space.
The park district is pondering building that facility near its Depot headquarters in Keystone Park. Commissioners are studying it and a decision could come this fall.
But now River Forest Village Trustee Tom Dwyer has come up with what he calls a better solution, an idea that to make it work would mean razing Roosevelt Middle School, the library and the River Forest Tennis Club and take the latter off the tax rolls.
Dwyer, in an email sent last month to fellow elected officials and staff, suggested constructing one massive building/complex on the site of the tennis club. It would contain a new middle school and public library; a park district gym would be on the ground floor. There would also be an underground parking garage. The tennis club would be rebuilt on the site of middle school.
“If I were king for a day, if money were no issue and there was infinite amount of money,” Dwyer said in his email, he would get the River Forest Tennis Club, District 90, the park district, the library and the village to meet ” in one room, and agree” to this idea.
A couple of River Forest officials who would have to be involved in such a conversation called it “wacky.” All interviewed saw huge pitfalls, not the least of which is a price tag that is guestimated at $100 million; there was no mention of how to pay for it. At least three officials noted that razing the three beloved, historic structures could engender the same type of animosity that the community just experienced during the debate over the Roosevelt Middle School exterior renovation project.
Bill Brander, president of the tennis club, wondered if the money could be better spent. “What would they be achieving…is it really worth it? I understand the need to solve community problems. But this is not a solution,” he said. “Show that it is still solving a big problem. This is all smoke; there’s no fire there.”
Dwyer said his idea, which came to him while bicycle riding, also piggy-backed on the River Forest collaboration meeting on May 27. He said he talked about his idea with trustees Mike Gibbs and Carmela Corsini — not together, which would be a violation of the Open Meetings Act — but by phone or in person; he could not remember when. Dwyer said the three of them did not want to make the decision unilaterally so he sent the email to the others. Neither Adduci nor fellow trustees Susan Conti, Roma Colwell-Steinke or Tom Cargie learned about it until they received the email.
Dwyer addressed it during the public officials comment period of the most recent board of trustees meeting. Said Adduci: “I appreciate his out-of-the-box thinking…. It’ll probably end up somewhere else.”
There was silence on the end of the phone after Wednesday Journal mentioned the idea to Claudette Zobel, library board president. Then she said: “I’m speechless …. This is way beyond the box. Plans have to be rooted in reality. This is unrealistic.”
Zobel, school board president Pat Meyer and park board president Ross Roloff said the project may be undoable because the library is on land owned by the park district. Were the library to be razed, the land underneath would revert to the park district.
Brander expressed concern over the disruption that would tear at the social fabric of the club, not to mention the facilities themselves. Frank Lloyd Wright supervised construction of two-thirds of the present clubhouse. The facility includes clay courts, which were costly to install, as well as a swimming pool, which was just renovated. The village also would lose $55,000 in property tax revenue. The club itself could see its membership diminish.
The project also would disrupt what is the most heavily congested area of River Forest — the Public, Recreational and Institutional District. It also doesn’t address how First Presbyterian, at the south end of the PRI, would fit into this. “The church would have to be brought into the conversation. It would be difficult to figure out the logistics of this complex project,” Roloff said.
One part of Dwyer’s concept would involve a new middle school. The current facility sits on 1.687 acres, but a new one would need nearly 27 acres – 20 acres plus 1 for every 100 students, according to the Council of Educational Facility Planners; the cost could be well more than $30 million.
Underground parking would need to be two stories, with a story height of 10 feet each; the floor area would have to 100,000 square feet, or 2.295 acres. The cost in 2013 was nearly $81 a square foot, roughly $7.7 million, according to some estimates.
Meyer and others also wondered about the impact on homes in and beyond the borders of the PRI, which are Chicago on the north, Quick on the south, Jackson on the east and Lathrop on the west.
“If the lessons of Roosevelt taught the community anything,” Meyer said, “it’s that passions in the village can be extremely strong especially around a proposal that offers modest change. This (plan) is not going anywhere.”
