Recreation has long been important to Orland Park.
In the early 1960s, the Orland Park Chamber of Commerce decided to tout the village as the golf center of the world, a promotion that chamber officials came up with after finding there were more golf course holes in a 10-mile radius than any other town in the world could boast.
Today, two golf courses–Old Oak Country Club and Silver Lake Country Club–operate in Orland Park, both privately run, though the Parks and Recreation Department offers golf lessons for players of all ages and levels.
Playing golf is just one of many ways that village residents can participate in the department’s sports and recreation offerings. This year, the department is operating on a $7 million budget with 28 full-time employees and up to 300 part-time workers during the summer.
From baseball to basketball, from gymnastics to in-line skating, from youth story hours to trips for seniors, there is a recreational activity for people of all ages through the department.
“We reach about 48 percent of the community in terms of them participating in something, be that a program or an athletic event or going to the swimming pool or taking a picnic in a park,” said department Director Gary Major.
About 22,000 people participate in village recreation programs, which total 400 offerings, Major said.
“We’re fortunate that the Village Board views parks and recreation as a very integral part of the Orland Park lifestyle and they have supported these programs and facilities,” Major said.
The village opened a $300,000 in-line skate park last year, and construction is expected to begin this spring on a $10 million recreation center. Grinding Edge, a 25,000-square-foot skate park in Centennial Park, opened July 24 and may reopen for the season as early as April 1, Major said.
In January, the parks department won awards for the skate park from the Illinois Association of Park Districts and the Illinois Parks & Recreation Association. Those groups selected the Orland Park facility as the best new specialty facility of 1999 for recreational departments and park districts serving 20,000 to 50,000 people.
Meanwhile, Orland Park is completing plans for a two-story recreation building to be built on 11 acres at 159th Street and 113th Court. The 87,000-square-foot center will include basketball courts, a running track, a soccer arena, a youth training center and space for dance, gymnastics and aerobics. The center could open in March 2001.
A pool will be built in a second phase, Major said.
“Outside of the Village Hall complex, it is probably (the village’s) largest capital project from a building standpoint,” he said. “This will be a neat building because it will be an activity-based building that addresses a lot of the athletic and adult recreation needs.”
The private sector also is looking to capitalize on fitness needs in Orland Park. Four health clubs operate in the village, and three more fitness facilities are on the drawing board.
Orland Park resident Joe Ranieri has proposed a $20 million fitness center on 13 acres at 159th Street and Wolf Road, near the village’s recreation center. The Lifestyle Fitness Center would offer swimming pools, fitness equipment, and basketball and volleyball courts, among other things. The center wouldn’t compete with the village facility, but there would be some synergy between the two, Ranieri said. The center could open in about a year, he said.
The company is looking to sign an agreement with a Chicago health-care provider to offer cardiovascular and orthopedic services at the center, Ranieri said, and it also plans to address the fitness needs of the disabled.
“We will do a lot with Special Olympics,” Ranieri said. “We will have equipment that disabled people will be able to use.”
Minnesota-based Life Time Fitness has proposed building a 24-hour, 110,000-square-foot health club at 163rd Street and La Grange Road. The company is seeking village approval for the project.
Palos Community Hospital, which operates a fitness center in a former hardware store on 94th Avenue, wants to build a larger facility in the village, but the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board last year denied the Palos Heights-based hospital’s request. The hospital’s appeal is scheduled for July, and the village has given its approval pending a successful appeal.
Major said future recreational challenges include meeting the changing needs of Baby Boomers.
“Everybody is moving so fast and everybody’s lives are so divided that we–and we are doing this now–have to develop recreation programs that really meet the availability of our users,” he said. “Offering them at different times and locations, accommodating the schedules of our users.
“As the Baby Boomer generation grows (older), the extension of recreation opportunities will continue into the 55-plus (age) market. And probably the big challenge, with the growth, is can we maintain our level of service from a financial standpoint.”
