Orland Park projects big deficit on some Centennial Park West concerts; moves Taste of Orland back to Village Green
The figure is based on estimated ticket sales for the events scheduled for July and August, and the village is already committed to paying the bands that are lined up, a bill of more than $500,000.
New Mayor Jim Dodge, during his campaign in which he defeated two-term Mayor Keith Pekau, was critical of the village spending on the concert venue and said Orland Park was losing money on the events.
Orland Park and other communities typically subsidize a good chunk of the cost for special events, such as concerts, hoping to make back some of the money through revenue from things such as ticket sales.
Spending and revenue projections were discussed by the Village Board committee meeting Monday. The board narrowly voted to bring the annual Taste of Orland food and music fest back to the Village Green, adjacent to Village Hall and the Civic Center.
That's where it has been held until last year, when it was moved to Centennial Park West.
Adjacent to the larger Centennial Park, Centennial Park West, 15609 Park Station Blvd., is a 12-acre park and includes a 3,200-square-foot permanent performance stage.
The park is also the site of Orland Park's Fourth of July fireworks.
Last month, before Dodge and three trustees he ran with were sworn in, the former Village Board approved about $1 million for work at Centennial West, including installation of two large video screens. The screens could be used for showing up-close shots of performers on stage, but also to show movies, village officials said.
Several concerts are scheduled for the Centennial Park West venue this summer, including Yacht Rock and Soft Rock Night on July 12, with Firefall and Ambrosia opening for headliner Pablo Cruise.
Also on tap are Lynyrd Skynrd performing on Aug. 8 and Trace Adkins on Aug. 30.
According to the village, projected revenue, including tickets sold so far, for all three events will be $468,600. Total expenses for the three events are expected to be a bit more than $1 million.
The hiring of the headliners and opening acts for all three nights, budgeted at $500,000, will be $561,000, according to the village.
The village expects that overall revenues, including beverage sales and future ticket purchases, for the three nights will fall short of expenses by $537,380.
While the numbers were discussed by trustees, there was no action taken.
All of the acts scheduled to perform are under contract, meaning they'll be paid if the village decided to cancel, said Ray Piattoni, the village's director of recreation and parks.
Piattoni said 'special events are very difficult to break even' on, and said the annual Taste event typically costs about $100,000 more to host than is recouped in revenue. He said Orland Park subsidizes 52% of the cost for special events such as concerts and Taste.
Piattoni said the Taste draws 20,000 to 30,000 people annually over the course of three days.
Resident Joe Solek, before the Village Board voted 4-3 to bring Taste back to Village Green, urged against the move.
He said at the Village Green site, the village has to rent a stage, lights and sound equipment, things already in place at the Centennial Park West venue.
Solek said it would be 'a step backward in the evolution of the village' to relocate the event.
Another resident said he favored bringing Taste back to its original site, calling it 'the heart of the village.'
Trustee John Lawler said he spoke with many residents while campaigning and said most were not happy with Taste being moved to Centennial Park West.
'It's the center of Orland Park and appeals to more people there,' Lawler said.
Trustee Cynthia Katsenes, who voted against the move, said she's heard just the opposite, with many 'folks saying how they liked it better' at the new site.
Trustee Bill Healy, also voting against moving Taste, said he thought it went 'splendidly' at Centennial Park West.
'Long term, that's the future of it,' Healy said.
Trustee Dina Lawrence, who supported bringing the event back to Village Green, said it had more of a 'neighborly' feel there.
'Maybe we won't do it forever (at Village Green), maybe we'll change our minds,' she said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Chicago Tribune
2 days ago
- Chicago Tribune
Letters: Chicago should rethink NASCAR possibilities
There is something that is not quite right about doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. This brings to mind the NASCAR race on Chicago's lakefront streets for the past three years. Since the city of Chicago and NASCAR agree there will be no race in 2026, that gives everyone a chance to take a deep breath and start thinking outside the box or, in this case, outside the makeshift road course that doesn't seem to make anybody happy. How about a NASCAR Festival at Navy Pier or even at McCormick Place? Think Chicago Auto Show but for NASCAR devotees and all kinds of car geeks. Giant screens showing historic NASCAR races and highlights. Cars, drivers, pit crews, vendors, entertainers and even sponsors could be showcased over a couple of days along our magnificent lakefront. Navy Pier has tons of space outdoors and inside. McCormick Place already has a blueprint for showcasing cars and trucks, plus all the neat car stuff you can imagine. If the whole purpose of what transpired in Chicago over the past three years was to build the NASCAR brand and get Chicagoans to fall in love with everything NASCAR, while bringing revenue to the city, then think what a festival could do. More people could possibly attend. Chicago's weather would be much less of a factor. There could be ample opportunities to let folks actually touch the cars and listen to, or talk to, those who are devoted to everything NASCAR. The people on both sides who are responsible for what will happen here in 2027 have ample time to figure out the actual opportunities and costs without shutting down a single learning that NASCAR decided not to return to Chicago in 2026, my first reaction was: 'Yeah!' My second reaction was: Thanks for returning Grant Park back to Chicago. My third reaction was: Now let's return the Taste of Chicago to Grant Park in July, when it is supposed to be, and let's return it to at least a full-week schedule and with more activities, like it used to be, and not the measly, reduced-size, three-day weekend as is scheduled this year. And also, let's return the Fourth of July fireworks to the Grant Park lakefront instead of the out-of-the-way, hard-to-get-to, overcrowded Navy their July 23 op-ed ('How do we help America's national parks? Make global visitors pay more'), Tate Watkins and Sharon Suiwen Zou advocate making international visitors to our national parks pay higher admission fees. They embrace the administration's 'America First' policy under the pretense of generating more revenue to 'sustain our most treasured public lands for visitors of all types' — you know, those foreign types! This is the same administration cutting national parks staff, looking to open up parks for private development and starting global tariff wars (with many countries that have been America's biggest source of tourism). How do you think that's going to play out? Want to visit the Eiffel Tower, the Vatican or Tower of London? Oh, you're an American? You have to pay more. America's 85 million acres of national parks are places where everyone is welcome to experience the natural beauty of the United States. Raising fees for global visitors would drive more tourism away than add any meaningful funding for the park system. Throughout our history, presidents, Congress and leaders of industry have protected and invested with pride in keeping national parks pristine and accessible. They didn't scheme to make a land grab for mining minerals, drilling for oil or building condos. This isn't about budgetary constraints or political correctness. It's a foreign policy message. Let's not hide behind 'America First' and wind up 'America Last.'Thank you for the article regarding Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church ('Will Pope Leo XIV forge greater LGBTQ+ inclusion?' July 20). Our Lady of Mount Carmel has been a keystone of LGBTQ+ inclusivity for decades. I remember 40 years ago turning to the church after an egregious life event and was welcomed by one of the deacons there, who not only was empathetic but also invited me and my partner to the rectory and his own home. I will never forget this kindness and the empathy extended to us! Thank you so much for highlighting this wonderful community you for the 'Sundae school' article in the Wednesday Food & Health section. My wife and I went that day to the Karak Cafe on Ogden Avenue in Lisle to congratulate them on their being highlighted in the article and try the Dubai chocolate sundae that was featured. The very friendly and gracious family there was unaware of your front-page section article but was pleased that we let them know about it. Also, the Dubai chocolate sundae is not on the cafe's posted menu, but fortunately, it is available upon did I sit on a bus bench recently for over an hour, contemplating the dire future of our planet that is heating up at an alarming rate? I'll tell you why: because no bus came, neither a city bus nor a free bus, while a thousand cars and trucks trundled by or stopped to idle noisily at a red light before continuing on. Four other people joined my vigil, each staring at their phone, naturally. Every person I asked about a possible arrival time for the bus had a different version: five minutes, 12 minutes, 14 minutes, etc. Finally, a fifth soul came along whose phone told her that the bus was 'canceled.' I don't mind that I simply walked back home without completing my little shopping trip. I do mind that we should be cutting down on traffic, thereby helping prevent dangerous air pollution. We encourage people to take public transportation to help save our planet. But who wants to take buses and trains that can't be relied upon? And can we blame people for taking their cars knowing they can make three or four stops in an hour and still be home by lunchtime? Future public transportation is going to have to be some kind of wonderful if we have any hopes of reducing the number of cars and trucks on the streets of our cities.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Hulk Hogan, a polarizing wrestling star, always belonged to Tampa Bay
Like Bigfoot in a bandana, Hulk Hogan was the stuff of Tampa Bay legend. Locals traded stories of seeing the WWE hall of famer around town, locking eyes with him over the eggs at Nature's Food Patch in Clearwater or spotting his glistening blonde mustache as he zipped across a causeway in a convertible. Fans — of both wrestling and celebrity gossip — rushed to ogle Hogan slinging cans of his Real American Beer at Doc Ford's in St. Petersburg in 2024. When a teenager flipped her car on the Veteran's Expressway later in the year, two men pulled over, stabbed her airbags with a ballpoint pen and dragged her from the wreckage. One of them was Hogan. Hogan, born Terry Gene Bollea, died Thursday morning in Clearwater, according to city officials. He was 71. To some, Hogan was a campy cartoon superhero come to life. He sprung off television screens to T-shirts and action figures and lunch boxes, so popular in the 1980s and '90s that Make-A-Wish sent him to visit 20 sick kids per week. To others, he was a polarizing figure known for his vaccine denialism and his racial slurs caught on tape. He dabbled in politics, hopping onstage at Madison Square Garden in October in a feather boa to cheer for Donald Trump with a throaty 'Let's win this, brother!' Through it all, Hogan always belonged to Tampa Bay. 'He made his home here for so many years. He was a local celebrity for so many years,' said Barry Rose, who archives professional wrestling history in Florida. 'He was always portrayed as a kind of Florida guy.' A very Tampa childhood Like many Floridians, Hogan was born somewhere else. He entered the world at a Georgia hospital in August 1953, weighing 10 pounds and 7 ounces. He moved to Tampa as a child, where he became a junior bowling champion and imposing Little League pitcher. According to a story from Knight-Ridder Newspapers in 1987, Hogan weighed 190 pounds by the time he was 12. Hogan told the Tampa Bay Times in 2014 that he grew up 'south of Gandy by like two blocks, right behind the ABC Liquors.' On many a Fourth of July, he lit sparklers and watched fireworks through the palm trees at Ballast Point Pier. When an elbow injury ended his sports career at age 14, Hogan swapped his bat for a guitar. 'He rocked, playing bass guitar in bands called Koco, Ruckus and Infinity's End,' the Knight-Ridder story said. 'One memorable evening his junior year, he streaked stark naked across the dimly lit football field where Robinson High seniors were receiving their diplomas.' After graduating from Robinson High School, Hogan studied music and business at the University of South Florida. It was his bass guitar that brought him back to sports. Wrestling brothers Jerry and Jack Brisco saw Hogan slapping the bass at a Tampa bar. They recognized the bronzed behemoth, who was a regular in the audience at local wrestling matches. 'It looked really strange,' Jerry Brisco told Knight-Ridder Newspapers. 'Here was this huge guy, 6 foot 8, with what looked like a toothpick in his hands, playing bass guitar. He had blond hair, plenty of it and a headband.' Hogan started working out at the Tampa Sportatorium, a wrestling training facility. 'They exercised me till I was ready to faint,' Hogan told the Times in 2021. 'And then they got me in the ring, and Hiro Matsuda sat between my legs. He put his elbow in the middle of my shin, and he grabbed my toe, and he broke my leg. He just snapped my leg in half. So that was my introduction to wrestling.' By the mid-1980s, Vince McMahon brought wrestling, once a regional phenomenon, to the national level. Hogan was the perfect star to unite the country, with his matches airing on MTV and soundtracked by Cyndi Lauper. 'The other aspect was the merchandise,' Rose said. 'So you're bringing a lot of kids to professional wrestling. They've got a Hulk Hogan T-shirt, they've got the giant foam fingers, they're eating ice cream bars.' He was able to create a persona that people bought in right away, Rose said. 'I think if he had lived another 20 years or so, he would have still been 'Hulk Hogan.'' When he was wrestling, Hogan easily charmed crowds as the 'babyface,' or the good guy. He also could just as well play the 'heel,' wrestling's bad guy. The same could be said for his life outside the ring. A muddled legacy If Orlando has Mickey Mouse, Clearwater had the Hulkster. That's the thinking behind the wrestler's decision to open up Hogan's Beach, a restaurant on the Courtney Campbell Causeway. After the VH1 reality show 'Hogan Knows Best' showcased Hogan's life in 2005, swarms of fans started showing up to get a peek at his Clearwater house. 'My partner, Ben Mallah, has put his heart and soul into this place,' Hogan told the Times in 2014. 'He goes, 'You need a presence in Tampa. The tourists all come to Universal and Disney, and they're all looking for you.' And it's true.' Other local businesses followed. Hogan himself flexed his oily muscles at every 'brother!' that passed by. He posed for photographs and signed autographs (one viral photo, not necessarily taken in Clearwater, shows his signature in a copy of 'The Illead'). Hogan told the Times that he didn't want people to come all the way to his restaurant and not get a photo with him. 'This whole Hulkamania thing is international,' Hogan said in 2014. 'Sometimes that doesn't sink in with me. I think, 'American icon? Oh, okay.' To me, I'm still Terry from Tampa.' Then came the scandals. Among them: a leaked 2006 sex tape with the wife of Todd Clem, aka radio host Bubba the Love Sponge, that Gawker posted in 2012. Then another bombshell tape was posted in 2015. The second video, according to former Times columnist Daniel Ruth, showed Hogan 'engaging in a profanity F-bomb (laden) rant in which he repeatedly dropped more racist N-bombs than an Aryan Nation convention.' When online news outlets posted the clip, World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. severed ties with Hogan. But the local sightings — and signings — continued. Hogan ventured to Sunset Music Festival (he liked to work out to dubstep music). He apologized profusely and publicly, with a special nod to the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Tampa Bay, who he often worked with locally. Not everyone accepted his words, but within a few years, Hogan had patched up his public image enough to rejoin wrestling royalty. He once again became the face of WWE and Wrestlemania. 'This is special to me because I've lived here my whole life. I've traveled the whole world, lived in California, lived in Japan. This place, the quality of life, the people that live here, this is the greatest-kept secret,' Hogan told the Times in 2021, after being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame and before hosting WrestleMania 37 with Titus O'Neil. In fall 2023, Hogan wed yoga instructor Sky Daily at Indian Rocks Baptist Church. His engagement announcement at downtown St. Petersburg's Birchwood Inn two months prior had gone viral. 'The 70–year–old wore a black tuxedo with a black headband as he greeted his bride, 45, who was clad in a strapless lace gown," wrote the Times. 'My new life starts now,' Hogan posted on social media. In the hours following reports of Hogan's death, reporters, tourists and locals flooded Clearwater Beach. At Hogan's Beach Shop, supporters laid bouquets as tribute. Some passersby stopped to take pictures of the shop and its large Hogan mannequin inside. A woman held the hand of a young child, and stopped in front of the doors. 'Say goodbye?' the woman asked. The toddler looked up at the Hogan mannequin. 'Goodbye,' the toddler said. Times staff writers Lizzy Alspach, Alexa Coultoff and Christopher Spata contributed to this report. Information from the Tampa Bay Times archive was used. Solve the daily Crossword
USA Today
4 days ago
- USA Today
Melania Trump may get name on the Kennedy Opera house. What has she done as first lady?
A House panel advanced a measure on July 22 that would rename part of the Kennedy Center after first lady Melania Trump. The measure was voted on as part of a larger amendment approved by the Appropriations Committee. The larger House and Senate still have to vote on the spending bill. If it passes, the opera house would be named the "First Lady Melania Trump Opera House." Currently, the theater is just designated as the "Opera House," located between the "Concert Hall" and the "Eisenhower Theater." Melania Trump is President Donald Trump's third wife. While the president's first six months back in office have been a whirlwind of news, the first lady has largely stayed out of the spotlight. Here is what to know about the first lady: What is the 'Take it Down Act?' Melania Trump made rare White House appearance to sign it What has Melania Trump done as first lady? Melania Trump played a key role in advocating for the Take it Down Act, which the president signed into law on May 19. The law criminalizes nonconsensual, explicit images created by artificial intelligence, often known as deepfakes. Outside of that advocacy, she has appeared in her official capacity sparingly since her husband returned to office. One of her appearances was actually at the Kennedy Center for a showing of "Les Misérables," where she stood alongside Trump as the crowd booed and cheered. Through the spring, she spoke at the International Women of Courage Awards, attended Pope Francis' funeral (on her 55th birthday), helped host the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, and hosted a celebration of military mothers and a stamp unveiling honoring former first lady Barbara Bush. She also attended the Army's 250th anniversary parade in D.C., which occurred on Trump's 79th birthday. Melania Trump visited a D.C.-area children's hospital ahead of the Fourth of July, and appeared with the president as he signed the "Big Beautiful Bill" on the holiday. The following week, she visited the flood-ravaged areas of Texas the following week. Later, she attended FIFA Club World Cup final, where her husband went viral for staying on stage for the winning team's celebration. When did Donald Trump marry Melania? Donald Trump and model Melania Knauss got married in 2005. They met in 1998, two years after she moved to New York. Does Melania Trump have a college degree? No. According to the American Presidency Project, Melania Trump did not complete a degree but attended the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia for one year. Is Melania Trump an immigrant? Yes, she was born in Slovenia and moved to the U.S. in 1996. Slovenia is a country in Eastern Europe between Croatia and Austria. Melania Trump was born as Melanija Knavs but changed her name to Melania Knauss and later Melania Trump. She is the only first lady to become a naturalized citizen and the second first lady born outside the United States. (The first was Louisa Catherine Adams, married to John Quincy Adams, who was president from 1825-1829.) See photos of Melania Trump before she became first lady, when she met Trump as a young model Contributing: Bart Jansen, Jennifer Sangalang, Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, Maria Francis, Anthony Robledo, USA TODAY Network Kinsey Crowley is the Trump Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at kcrowley@ Follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley or Bluesky at @
