The Park Forest Public Library now swims with the fishes.
The library in recent months converted a large open space into a commons area where patrons can read, relax, chat (quietly, of course) with friends, and even meditate on that and this while gazing at the fishes in the new aquarium.
The large fish tank separates the commons from the rest of the library and is part of a new concept of how libraries can connect with the community and be more than just a place to check out books and use the computers. Aquariums, we are told, operate as a calm oasis for adults as well as children.
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If you have not yet been soothed by the sight of these fishes, you can check things out for yourself at 1 p.m. Jan. 9 as the library inaugurates a series of monthly conversations with some of the community’s movers and shakers. Park Forest Police Chief Pete Green will be the first guest.
The program began with a column we wrote last year about police officers who volunteered to help a widowed mother and her young child move to another house. I wrote that this was a story “about what police officers do when no one is watching.”
Library director Barbara Osuch believes there are similar stories worth telling and believed the library would be the right place to unfold these tales. In the interests of honesty, this wretch, along with Park Forest information director Jason Miller and Osuch, will take part in these informal chats. Barbara Moore, the former community affairs director for the village, will be the guest on Feb. 13. Therese Goodrich, who has been involved with every aspect of life in the village for the past 60 years, is scheduled for the March 12 tete-a-tete.
If this is too complicated for you, there are the fishes.
The library is at 400 Lakewood Blvd.
Sick hospitals
Also on Jan. 9, a meeting to discuss the future of St. James Hospital in Chicago Heights will be held at 9 a.m. at Victory Apostolic Church, 20801 Matteson Ave., Matteson.
Hospital officials plan to move all emergency services to its sister hospital in Olympia Fields, about five miles away. Essentially all that would be left in the Heights would be a pharmacy, outpatient care, including weight-loss and diabetic services, and laboratory and diagnostics services in a “modernized professional building.” A walk-in urgent care center would be housed on Dixie Highway. There is also the probability that perhaps two-thirds of the present facility will be demolished.
Plans call for upgrading the Olympia Fields facility at a cost of more than $130 million. It is said the Chicago Heights hospital has been overwhelmed with emergency care patients, including some 40,000 seeking help in 2014. All this care costs money. The hospital recently closed 25 percent of beds and expects to save $20 million a year when the plan is completed.
At a meeting in December, hospital President Arnie Kimmel said that the hospital will present its plans to the state in February as part of its “timetable.” And what Chicago Heights does with the vacant land after most of the present facility — which is more than a century old — is bulldozed is up to them.
A recent press release by the hospital depicted the change as being one that will better serve the community. Revenue and potential job losses were not mentioned. In these cases, it never is.
Jerry Shnay is a freelance journalist who covers the Park Forest community for the Daily Southtown. He can be emailed at [email protected].