About 40 Orland Park residents showed up to a village-organized community engagement session Wednesday to gauge opinions on Centennial Park West and the potential for a performing arts center.
“Today is just the kickoff,” said Ray Piattoni, village parks and recreation director. “I think it’s a great start. It’s excellent to get the community involved, and as we go through the project and the feasibility study, we want to continue to engage as many community members as we can.”
Consultants from Keen Independent Research and Theatre Projects led the session and are responsible for developing a business plan for Centennial Park West, as well as determining potential costs and benefits of bringing a performing arts center to the village.
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They provided an expected timeline of their work, including plans to finalize and present their findings early next year, before setting residents loose to consider discussion questions at stations spread around the Orland Park Police Department conference room.
Some at the session, including 12-year-old Mary Fischer and her mom, Tina Cucci Fischer, lit up at the mention of a performing arts center. Cucci Fischer, who directs the Orland Park Children’s Theater program, said she had to scale back plays and other productions after the village cultural center shut down in 2024.
“We’ve done a lot of readjusting, negotiating over the years,” Cucci Fischer said.
She said she’s grateful to the village for providing access to a space known as Studio VOP near Frontier Park on Beacon Avenue, but the space cannot accommodate large performances. The children’s theater must limit production participation to 30 people and its audience to 100.
“It’s a simple but mighty stage,” said Mary, who took part in her first community theater production at age 3.
She and other performers tend to feel more at ease during school productions, having access to better lighting and more space between the audience and stage.
“It brings you into character more and makes you more in the moment,” she said.
Julianna Rubio Slager, who runs local dance company Ballet 5:8, was also excited to show officials there is plenty of demand for a performing arts center.
She said her company is home to 50 dancers from around the world, and “not letting Orland Park have an opportunity to see them is such a disservice to our community.”
“There’s so many different choirs and community theater groups, and a lot of us are homeless,” Slager said.
The Village Board previously discussed a performing arts center as an anchor for its planned downtown, approving a redevelopment agreement that requires the village to decide whether to pursue the project within three years. Mayor Jim Dodge said he wanted to set an expiration date on the project to “not drag this out forever and take 20 years making the decision.”
Board member John Lawler, who took part in Wednesday’s discussion session, said he’s a proponent of the idea to attract more visitors to the village and provide a space for performing arts classes and performances alike.
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He said he’s also eager to hear from experts about Centennial Park West, as he said previous Mayor Keith Pekau’s administration built the facility without a business plan in place.
“We hear some people are unhappy with the noise and the traffic,” he said. “Some of it could be political — some people don’t like it for that reason. But I think one of the biggest universals is we built a big facility that doesn’t have bathrooms.”
He also mentioned the village taking a more than $500,000 loss on the park in 2025 as reason to look deeper into its use.
“It’s a nice facility — we’re not going to get rid of it,” he said. “We’re not going to tear it down and stop utilizing it. But we want to ask Keen, how should we program it? What should we be going after?”
The consultants had plans to attend Friday’s concerts at the venue, gauging noise to the surrounding neighborhoods along with visitor experiences. On Thursday, the team gathered ideas from a joint meeting of the village’s 15 commissions and advisory boards.
Residents interested in giving input are able to answer a survey on both Centennial Park West and a possible performing arts center. Go to www.orlandpark.org/ to access the online survey.