Brookfield trustees OK $108,000 for Ehlert design

With a deficit in the Village General Fund the PEP Party is spending money on a concession stand!

Work expected to begin early in 2011

Brookfield village trustees on Oct. 25 voted unanimously to pay $108,000 to two firms engaged to design and manage a major improvement project at Jaycee/Ehlert Park, slated to break ground in 2011.

Hitchcock Design Group will get $103,000 to design, engineer and manage a project that officials hope will result in the construction of a new concession stand in the northwest quadrant of the park; a splash pad, pavilion and storm water retention area in the central area of the park.

Volo-based Hey and Associates will be paid $5,000 to perform topographic surveys related to the design.

"We'll probably get the documents back from Hitchcock in January," said Assistant Village Manager Keith Sbiral. "We'd like to have the documents done so we can do the concession stand as the first phase of the project."

Sbiral said if all falls into place and the weather cooperates, demolition of the existing concession stand in the park will commence in spring 2011. While some areas of the park will be closed during 2011 due to the construction, all ball fields will remain open, according to Sbiral.

"Ideally, the whole thing will be done and open in 2011," Sbiral said.

The "whole thing" Sbiral referred to is Phase I of a much larger vision for the western half of Ehlert Park (west of Sunnyside Avenue) that calls for baseball fields to be repositioned and additional soccer fields to be constructed. If Phase I is completed, it will cost an estimated $1 million.

The village has $603,000 of that sum in hand in the form of grants from Lyons Township and the state of Illinois. Additionally, Brookfield has applied for a $400,000 Open Space Lands Acquisition and Development (OSLAD) grant.

The village submitted the application this summer and expects to hear if the project is being considered by December or January. If the village gets the OSLAD grant, the village will move forward with the entire first phase. If not, the project will be scaled back, said Sbiral.

"All the way from conception until now, we've been very clear that we will not have a lot of money to put into this," Sbiral said. "We are only going to do what we have money to do. Cost overruns are not an option, because there's no other money available."

Earlier, Phase I of the plan also included the relocation of the Kesman Memorial Garden and the Korean War memorial to a site near Gerritsen Avenue. However, just when that might happen is now unclear.

Those memorials won't be relocated now until Phase II of the project takes place. There is no plan presently for that phase to move forward.