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player ready...After informally lending money to the Orland Park Civic Center every year since it opened in 1989, the village has decided a legal loan agreement may be in order.
If the Village Board takes the Finance Committee’s recommendation Monday, it would sign a promissory note documenting the total amount owed to the village, $772,587, said Village Trustee Kathy Fenton. No timetable for repayment or interest charges would be included in the legal contract, she said.
Three months ago, Trustee Bernard Murphy questioned the practice of subsidizing the state-authorized Civic Center and suggested the village ask the state to abolish the authority. By classifying the payments as loans instead of grants, the village may be able to recoup its money from the state, he said.
The 10,000-square-foot Civic Center, which is rented for weddings, baseball-card shows, bingo games and small business conferences, was expected to pay for itself, said Gail Blummer, general manager of the Civic Center Authority. The facility, next door to the Village Hall at 14650 S. Ravinia Ave., has not attracted the kind of fees to break even, she said.
The Civic Center Authority ended the 1999 fiscal year with a $4,635 debt, said Jerry Noga, a member of the Civic Center Authority board. “If it wasn’t for an increase in insurance, we would have been profitable for the first time,” he said.
The Civic Center Authority was designated in 1986. The state paid $1.5 million toward the construction of the $2 million Orland Park facility. The village contributed 3 acres of land and the public improvements to the property. In 1993, the state paid for a parking lot expansion and an addition to the building.
The Finance Committee decided this week to define the annual funding as a loan, but officials are still reviewing the possibility of changing the status of the Civic Center.