Brookfield and Riverside are working together to improve the street that divides them.
Each village’s board of trustees this month approved an intergovernmental agreement between the two municipalities for sidewalk, curb, gutter and street pavement replacement on Golf Road next year. Riverside approved the contract on Sept. 5 while Brookfield approved it four days later; each group of trustees voted on it as part of their respective consent or omnibus agenda, meaning neither board discussed it.
The street, just west and southwest of Riverside Brookfield High School, marks the longitudinal boundary between the two villages. Brookfield is responsible for the west half of the road while Riverside oversees the east half, necessitating an agreement like the one they’ve signed to make any improvements.
According to agenda documents from the village board meetings, Brookfield is acting as the leader for the Golf Road renovation because the street is one of four the village hopes to improve as a collective project next year.
The work on Golf Road will stretch from Ridgewood Road to Parkview Avenue before continuing onto Woodside Avenue from Parkview Avenue to Brookfield Avenue. That street will also be improved from Woodside Avenue all the way to Prairie Avenue, where work will pick up on Grand Boulevard from the downtown intersection to the six-way stop with Grant and Sunnyside avenues.
Brookfield has received grant funding for the project through the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning’s Surface Transportation Program, which supports local infrastructure improvements across northeastern Illinois. Through the STP local fund program, administered by the West Central Municipal Conference, Brookfield was set to receive funding to complete the improvements in 2026. Now, the village will receive contingency funding — grants approved for other municipalities that ended up not using them — to get them done in 2025.
The grant funding will cover 80% of the cost of construction for the entire project, leaving Brookfield and Riverside to cover the rest. For Riverside’s east lane of Golf Road, Brookfield’s firm Hancock Engineering estimated a total price of $109,411, including construction engineering fees. Riverside will be on the hook to reimburse Brookfield for its 20% slice of $21,882.
In a phone interview Tuesday, Brookfield Village Manager Tim Wiberg said the village expects to pay the same as Riverside for its half of the work on Golf Road.
For all of its planned improvements, including the portion Riverside will reimburse, Brookfield expects to pay $1,015,660, Brookfield Finance Director Doug Cooper confirmed in an email to the Landmark. The village will receive $4,062,640 in grants to account for the project’s total cost of nearly $5.1 million.
“That’s why we are so heavily into [the STP] program, because it’s a great funding source,” Wiberg said. “We’re getting 80% paid for by non-village funds, so we’ll probably keep going back to that well.”
While Brookfield and Riverside have already joined forces, they will likely not see their efforts pay off until this time next year.
In an email to Landmark, Brookfield Public Works Director Vincent Smith said the contracted date for construction to end is Sept. 19, 2025, though workers will have two more weeks to finish fixing punch list items. He said Brookfield and its engineer are optimistic about resurfacing the streets before the 2025-26 school year, but work might not finish before school starts.
