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player ready...As marketing & event manager for the village-owned Oak Brook Bath & Tennis Club, Marianne Long usually has spent most of her time working with people to book weddings, and some other events, in a venue that can accommodate up to 200 people for a sit-down dinner.
The Bath & Tennis Club hosted 64 weddings in 2019, including nine in June. The 2020 calendar had about 50 weddings scheduled for March through September of 2020, including nine in June, before the coronavirus pandemic began.
Long has been working over the past few months with many who had scheduled weddings to reschedule or simply accept their cancellation and return their deposit.
“It’s been really difficult for these poor couples who often plan for this at least a year in advance,” Long said. “It’s been difficult to plan now because there have been so many unanswered questions with the states’ rules and regulations. We really want to make things as easy as possible for those who have had to cancel or postpone their weddings.”
Diana Elmer is a former Chicago resident who had booked a late March wedding at the Bath & Tennis Club, but had to cancel.
“At first, I was in denial, and then things started to get more restricted and it was overwhelming,” she said. “Every single day, I was getting more stressed out.”
Elmer made the decision at the end of March to cancel her Bath & Tennis Club wedding. Instead, she moved to Kansas City, where her husband, Blake, lives, and the couple was married in a relative’s backyard with nine family members in attendance.
“My siblings didn’t even come because of travel concerns,” Elmer said. “We had it on Zoom for them.”
Of the weddings that had been scheduled at the Bath & Tennis Club, the majority have been rescheduled for 2021, Long said.
“Our pricing is going up next year, but we have been offering the same rates as we have in 2020 for those who reschedule, and our caterer is doing the same thing,” she said. “This has been very difficult for everyone, but our clients have been very understanding.”
While Long has continued working to reschedule postponed weddings and book new ones for 2021, the village board is discussing options for replacing a leaky roof.
During the village’s 2020 Budget presentation, $165,000 was budgeted for replacing the roof with a standing seam metal roofing system.
Additional roofing contractors have looked at the roof and determined that to install that type of roof, there would be additional framing required to install the metal panels flat. The cost estimate to do the needed work for that is approximately $460,000, said Doug Patchin, Oak Brook’s director of public works.
Village Board member Asif Yusuf suggested Tuesday that Patchin seek cost estimates using concrete and asphalt, but not for the more expensive metal option.
In talking about the bigger picture for the Bath & Tennis Club, Yusuf said he believes the board needs to consider if it wants to continue with operation of the building.
“I know this is a tough subject,” he said. “If we’re going to continue to lose money, we have to look at whether it’s viable to keep this structure, or not. This is a serious question we have to ask. Given the level of use by our residents and the ongoing costs of running it, is it worthwhile to do it?”