A new nonprofit organization has been launched to help support Phillips Park in Aurora with projects and initiatives the city-owned park wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford.
Located near East Aurora High School, Phillips Park is a 400-acre public recreation area with a playground, a zoo, sunken gardens, a golf course and a family aquatics center, although the latter is a partnership between the city and the Fox Valley Park District. All parts of the park, except for the aquatics center, will be within the purview of the newly-formed Phillips Park Foundation, its organizers say.
“It’s one of the gems of the city,” Ald. Ted Mesiacos, 3rd Ward, said of Phillips Park.
He said that the new organization, which he will get a non-voting seat on because he represents the area, will work to “make it another destination spot again.”
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To help launch the Phillips Park Foundation, the city of Aurora has agreed to give the organization $110,000 — of which $100,000 will be coming from Mesiacos’ own ward funds. The rest is set to come from donations made to the park during the holiday lights festival held there each year.
The funding agreement was unanimously approved by the Aurora City Council on Tuesday evening. Mesiacos recused himself from the vote and the discussion around the agreement, both at that meeting and at previous ones.
Still in its infancy, the Phillips Park Foundation is currently being led by a board of directors chaired by Bill Donnell, who represented Aurora’s 4th Ward on City Council for 12 years. He said that Mesiacos approached him to help with the effort, and since he served for many years in executive roles at the Fox Valley Park District, he was “very interested.”
Other members of the board include Ron Moses — who wrote the book on Phillips Park, and whose father and grandfather both served as superintendent of the park — as well as former longtime City Clerk Cheryl Vonhoff, former Deputy Mayor Chuck Nelson, Mike Baum, Scott McCleary and John Savage.
“It’s a great group, and we hope to be able to raise some money and do some great things at Phillips Park,” Donnell said.
The foundation was created with the idea of helping to do things at Phillips Park that the city couldn’t do through the regular budgeting process, not to tell professional staff how to maintain the park, he said. No specific projects are lined up just yet, but there have been a lot of discussions about making improvements to the zoo.
The golf course, for instance, is looking great, according to Donnell. But, he said, the zoo is sometimes overlooked.
“Frankly, it wasn’t until I got grandkids going over there that I kind of came back to the zoo,” Donnell said. “I think it’s one of the last free zoos around, but we’re going to be looking at other zoos and see what best practices that they have.”
So, attractions and improvements to the zoo could be on the foundation’s to-do list, he said.
Mesiacos also noted that he wanted to see improvements made to the zoo, both in its exhibits and in the overall experience. But he said that the issue of funding for infrastructure has been around since he first came into office in 2013.
“We don’t have running washrooms,” Mesiacos said. “Displays are dilapidating.”
There’s a lot of good things going on with the park’s golf course, he said, but the other parts of the park haven’t been improved at the same rate.
The key will be for the Phillips Park Foundation to work with the city of Aurora to finalize a master plan for the park, according to Mesiacos. He said that plan will create a blueprint and priority list of what to focus on.
Beyond capital projects, the foundation will also be looking into events and programming, Donnell said. For example, he said that Oktoberfest will be returning to the park.
Both Donnell and Mesiacos mentioned that the foundation will be creating an advisory group to help the board.
“They’re going to help kind of be our sounding board and determine what it is we really want to do,” said Donnell.
The advisory committee will be a way for the community to get involved, according to Mesiacos.
The idea for the Phillips Park Foundation came out of a conversation Mesiacos had with the late Bob O’Connor, who had served as alderman and mayor, about nine years ago. Mesiacos said he was grateful to work with him.
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There’s a lot of small things that can be done now to improve the park, Mesiacos said, but his main goal is to look long-term.