School and community leaders celebrated the start of the second part of an ambitious and expensive renovation project at Oak Park River Forest High School, holding a groundbreaking earlier this month as work on constructing a new physical education wing sets to start.
The work, officially titled Project 2, will replace the century-old physical education facilities on the school campus with a new space that will include a three-court, flexible-use gym; other multi-use gyms for dance, wrestling, yoga and more; a new pool; weight room; gender-specific and gender-neutral locker rooms; classrooms and staff offices; equipment, storage and conference rooms; a common area; upgrades for performing arts programs; and more.
“It’s a $100 million investment,” said Mike Poirier, one of the Imagine OPRF facilities master plan work group members. “The school and the community doesn’t engage with that lightly.”
While most speakers at the June 4 groundbreaking celebrated the future of the school and the district, some community leaders also noted how uncertain the project was in its earliest stages due to the sheer expense of the plans. A 2016 ballot referendum related to the project failed by fewer than 30 votes.
It has taken school leaders and community supporters years to sell – and get funding for – the project.
According to a school notification announcing the groundbreaking, the $102 million investment in Project 2 will be funded through a combination of $44 million from cash reserves, $45 million in bond issuances and about $13 million in philanthropic donations raised by the Imagine Foundation.
Construction is expected to be completed summer 2026.
Work on the renovation initially began in 2017. That year, the Oak Park-River Forest School District 200 Board of Education asked for a facilities plan designed to meet student needs. This led to the formation of the Imagine OPRF Work Group. The group included 30 community members and 10 high school employees. They spent one-and-a-half years getting input on facility needs from people in the community.
Poirier pointed out that the campus is land-locked and when major upgrades are needed, the district has to demolish and rebuild. He said people eventually came to see how “deficient” some campus facilities were – including the gym, and “some of them just weren’t serving the students.”
He explained that dance was taught in a gym, but only half the assigned students fit in the space. The other half worked in hallways.
“You wouldn’t see that in math class or German class or in any other class,” Poirier said.
He said the new construction should last at least 50 years or more.
Superintendent Greg Johnson said in his remarks at the groundbreaking that one of the buildings to be replaced opened in 1929.
If the current project wraps on schedule, it will mark a decade after the first referendum failed. Construction in Project 1 began in 2020 and wrapped up in 2022. Now, Project 2 is expected to finish in 2026.
“My hope is that 50 years from now, with some 40,000 more Huskies going through the facility, that we’ll have a bicentennial celebration appreciating the bravery and the vision of the Imagine Foundation,” said school board President Tom Cofsky.
Jesse Wright is a freelancer.