The new American green: Olympia Fields Park and Community Center - Illinois

Parks & Recreation, August, 1995 by Marion Weiss

High-quality design is an aspiration that every community can agree is important; the means to achieve it are more elusive. Olympia Fields Park District, 30 miles south of Chicago, Illinois, decided to hold an international design competition for its new park and community center. Its aspirations were extremely high: the community envisioned a new type of public park -- a new American Green -- that would fit the emerging character of today's changing suburbs. The community wanted to build a meeting place for spontaneous games as well as a 4th of July concert. Most importantly, it wanted to build a new common ground for residents of the Village and establish a model that might be followed by other towns and suburbs.

As architects, our firm has focused on public buildings and public open space. The competition for "The New American Green" was especially interesting to us in that it blurred the boundaries between architecture and landscape, making it a uniquely American challenge. In fact, Olympia Fields had joined a long standing national tradition to seek the most original and appropriate designs for our public places, a quest that has produced treasures such as Olmstead and Vaux's Central Park in New York City and the White House and Capitol in Washington D.C. The competition established priorities which inspired us and articulated a set of values that we believe should be shared by many suburban communities today.

The Park District envisioned a landscape that would bring together neighbors who might share little in common, preserve existing historic structures, and invite varied planned and spontaneous uses, and most importantly, provide a home for the community's civic, cultural, and recreational events. In the broadest terms, the Park invited the entrants to invent a new prototype for the 21st century's suburban park. The carefully researched and defined competition program impressed us because it included local history, structural surveys of the existing historic structures, well documented site information including topography and locations of structures on adjacent properties, as well as a comprehensive series of both aerial and ground level photographs. The competition also identified a specific budget, one that would require a great deal of invention to sustain the goals of the competition mandate.

This article is about the development of the design and its realization; it is also about a far sighted park district, whose desire to create a true center for its community focused its decisions throughout a challenging process.

History of the Area

Olympia Fields, Illinois, is one of the oldest suburban communities in the Chicago region. In 1910, an elite residential community was established adjacent to a country club with four golf courses and a prestigious clubhouse. By 1927 the Village of Olympia Fields had been incorporated. Prior to that, in the last century, the native woodland and prairie had been cultivated by homesteaders who found the soil rich and productive. During the Depression and between the world wars, the Village's growth was very slow; and after World War II, two of the 18 hole golf courses were sold for housing developments.

The Dream of "A New American Green"

The Olympia Fields Park District, organized in February 1956, is an autonomous unit of government. At that time, the Village population was approximately 350; the Village now has a population of 4,500. The Park District, governed by a board, is composed of five members elected at large for six-year staggered terms. In 1973 the board appointed its first director, Mary Colmar, who continues to hold that position and oversees the growing number of programs and events sponsored by the park district. The dream of the new park must be understood in the context of the unique history of this particular park district.

The Park District leased its first 10-acre park, Sergeant Means Park, from the Village in 1966. Originally part of a 60-acre farm, Means Park was developed to include a baseball field, four tennis courts, a playground, sledding hill, and a water detention area. Over the years the Park District expanded. Largely the result of individual land donations and land acquisitions utilizing federal and state land acquisition grant moneys, the Park District currently includes 12 park sites covering a total of 114 acres. Cull's Nursery site, which included historic buildings, was a unique exception; it was purchased without outside funding or donations. Recognizing a unique opportunity to create a new type of public park, Olympia Fields Park District purchased the Nursery's remaining 10 acres in 1985.

To find the most creative solutions, the Park District advertised the project as a national competition.

The Competition Begins

"A New American Green" Design competition was initiated in October 1990, following the purchase of the 10 acre Cull's nursery site in 1985 and the donation of the existing 10-acre Sergeant Means Park site from the Village of Olympia Fields. The combined 20-acre community park site with its three historic farm buildings became the focus of the National "New American Green" Design Competition. Now, with an unmatched opportunity, the Park District attempted to envision more than just another park.