It doesn`t have Roman or Gothic columns surrounding it, and it doesn`t have a captured German submarine, a world-class collection of French impressionist paintings or a set of Egyptian mummies.
But Du Page`s County`s newest museum does have ducks, frogs, a floating stage and an ice-skating warming house.
In order to meet state requirements that will permit the Oakbrook Terrace Park District to receive its share of revenue from the county`s first off-track betting parlor-estimated at more than $100,000 a year-the park board has designated the 12-acre Terrace View Park as an outdoor living museum. The park is located on the northwest corner of Illinois Highway 83 and 22nd Street.
”This is now a living museum that we can expand, develop and enhance for the residents of the area,” said Mario Parente, the park district director.
”And as far as our reading of the state statutes, it can be done.”
The Illinois law that allows for the operation of off-track horse betting parlors also calls for 1 percent of the revenue going to the county, 1 percent to the municipality and four-sevenths of 1 percent to be made available to a local park district to operate a museum.
”I know we are used to thinking that a museum is like the Art Institute, but that (Terrace View Park) will be a museum of outdoor life of the lake and the wetlands,” Parente said.
The Winner`s Circle, the county`s first off-track betting parlor, opened this month in Oakbrook Terrace at Midwest Road and 22nd Street.
While city officials estimated that they could collect about $300,000 a year, park district officials said they believe they could collect more than $100,000. The park district includes all of Oakbrook Terrace and some adjacent unincorporated areas in York Township.
”We have no idea what we will collect in revenue, but we are already planning further development of this outdoor museum,” Parente said. ”It will be a museum; we are not just saying it is to collect the revenue.”
The park district acquired the land about 20 years ago and used it almost solely for baseball fields until 1990, when they developed it as a more complete park with a three-acre lake and tennis courts to accompany the baseball fields.
”We are also developing a wetland adjacent to the park and have stocked the lake with fish,” he said. ”The area has other wildlife, like frogs, many varieties of flowers and other plants and even a fox or two.”
Over the summer, personnel from Shedd Aquarium in Chicago visited the park and ”promised us technical advice in the future,” Parente said.
”As the park, the lake and the wetlands mature, people will be able to see that area develop,” he said.
Among the projects aimed at turning the park into a living outdoor museum, park district officials hope to be able to transform the ice-skating warming house into an interpretive center with information for visitors, which could include field trips by local school classes.
Oakbrook Terrace officials previously had considered buying a city home as a future historical museum, but that idea was dropped last year because of the cost.
