Legislation that passed the Illinois General Assembly over the weekend could enable Riverside Brookfield High School and Brookfield Zoo Chicago to reach a long-awaited agreement on who can use the baseball field north of the school.
Senate Bill 637, which passed the Illinois House of Representatives on Thursday, May 29, and the Illinois Senate on Saturday, May 31, would make the agreement possible. State Sen. Mike Porfirio, whose district includes parts of Brookfield, Riverside and neighboring communities, introduced the bill in January.
If signed into law by Gov. JB Pritzker, the bill would amend the act that regulates the Forest Preserves of Cook County’s relationship with the Chicago Zoological Society, which operates the zoo.
The change would allow zoo leadership to sublease its land, which it leases from the forest preserves, to nonprofits or government entities like District 208. The zoo now cannot sublease any of its land.
The baseball field in question, immediately north of RB, is on forest preserves land that is leased to the zoo. While the zoo has historically permitted the school to use the field for baseball games, the zoo uses it sometimes, too — as overflow parking.
“There was one time, it was a nice day on spring break in March of 2011 or ‘12, and we had our softball and baseball teams playing games [on the field],” Kevin Skinkis, the superintendent of D208, told the Landmark Monday. “The zoo got crowded, and they started to put cars in the outfield, and we had to stop the games.”
Now, RB’s teams play baseball and softball at fields owned by local park districts to avoid a redo of that day, Skinkis said.
In 2021, the high school came to an agreement with the forest preserves for the usage of the land, but the zoo nixed it due to a 27% reduction in paved parking in the area. The year before, the forest preserves rejected a different plan the high school and zoo had agreed to due to the number of bur oak trees that would have been removed.
“I’m starting my 15th year at RB, and I’ve been in conversations with the zoo to try to come up with a solution for the field for over 11 years, and I know this is something that my predecessors had been working on,” Skinkis said. “Over the last two years, I have had some really good conversations with Dr. Mike [Adkesson] and Jennifer Baader from the zoo, and I think it was in early spring when they gave me a heads-up that they were going to propose legislation to see if that would help us.”
Adkesson is the zoo’s president and CEO while Baader is its senior vice president of government affairs.
Baader told the Landmark Tuesday morning the legislation came to be after the zoo tried to find a way to formalize its previously informal agreement with RB.
“We talked with the forest preserves and found out that it’s possible, [but] we didn’t have legal authority to enter into a more formal agreement through our enabling statute in Springfield,” she said. “The forest preserves, the zoo and the high school all went down to Springfield and met with Sen. Porfirio, Sen. [Javier] Cervantes, Rep. [Abdelnasser] Rashid and Rep. Lisa Hernandez … Those elected officials were able to push a bill quite quickly through the process in Springfield, and we’re so excited that it passed in record time.”
While she said it was too early to comment on the specifics, Baader said a final agreement between the forest preserves, zoo and high school would likely give control of the field to RB.
“We do not have plans for [the field] under our Next Century Plan over the next 15 years, so instead of having that land sit vacant or as a partially used parking lot, we hope that this bill allows us to utilize the space to the best of its ability by sharing it with the community,” she said.
A press release from Porfirio’s office suggested RB officials may look to build a “new baseball stadium” on the field following a sublease agreement with the zoo. Skinkis said there are no concrete plans for such a stadium, but D208 would intend to invest in improving the field’s infrastructure to make it safer for students if a sublease is finalized.
“The ideal situation would be, the school district would provide funds to the zoo so that they can update some other parking areas so that the high school can have access to that field and not have to worry about cars being parked on the field,” he said.
Skinkis said he was “overwhelmed with excitement” when he learned the bill had passed the Illinois Senate over the weekend.
“If this all comes to fruition and a plan comes in place, I think there will be many, many, many families in the District 208 community that will be happy to see that a resolution has come about,” he said. “The high school is very appreciative to all the local legislators, the zoo staff, the forest preserves staff and the community for being patient as we work through this. We are very optimistic about the future.”
