On July 8, the River Forest Park District cut a ribbon at Constitution Park. The next evening, July 9, it cut another one at Priory Park, complete with a DJ, hot dogs and the first public look at a brand-new splash pad. Seven weeks later, on August 31, the district put a six-foot security fence around a ballfield at Keystone Park and won't take it down until mid-November.
If you live anywhere near one of these parks, you've spent most of 2026 watching this same pattern repeat. A project wraps, the fencing comes down, and within weeks a different section of the district goes dark. It looks like a village that can never finish anything. It's actually a village working through a capital list it published two years ago, one line item at a time, and knowing where you are on that list changes how the whole year reads.
The Back-to-Back Ribbon Cuttings
Constitution Park, at 7715 Greenfield Street near Willard School, was the first entire-park renovation under the park district's 2024 master plan, a project that followed an 18-month planning process before the board adopted it. The scope was a full rearrangement, not a patch job: a new universal accessible playground built for ages 2 to 12 in the northeast corner, relocated sand volleyball courts that double as an ice rink, a new sitting plaza, a 20-by-20 picnic shelter with two single-stall restrooms, and a relocated 60-foot basepath baseball field in the southwest corner. Construction ran from September 2025 through June 2026, and demolition of the old playground started on September 17, 2025.
Priory Park, at 7354 Division Street, went a different direction. Instead of touching the ballfields or the existing playground, the district added a roughly 1,700-square-foot splash pad with more than a dozen spray features, expanded the Priory Center by 700 square feet to create a real program room, and added a small picnic shelter. The village board gave final approval on September 8, 2025, and the section of the park north of the playground was fenced from November 12, 2025 through May 22, 2026.
That means both projects were under construction at the same time for most of the fall, winter and spring, and both happened to finish within a day of each other.
What Each Project Actually Bought the Village
| Project | Location | Scope | Estimated Cost | Construction Window |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Constitution Park | 7715 Greenfield St | New playground, volleyball/ice rink, picnic shelter, relocated ball field | $1.6 million | Sept 2025 to June 2026 |
| Priory Park | 7354 Division St | Splash pad, 700 sq ft center addition, picnic shelter | $800,000 | Nov 2025 to May 2026 |
Two projects, two different budgets, two different reasons for existing, landing in the same construction season by coincidence of scheduling rather than a shared master timeline.
Then Keystone Went Dark
The ribbon cuttings weren't the end of the list. Keystone Ballfield #2 is now being converted from a grass and dirt infield to synthetic turf, a project the village approved as part of the park district's 2026-2027 Capital Projects Budget. The field closed on August 31 and stays fenced through November 13. If you have questions about it, the district has been routing them directly to Executive Director Michael Sletten, which tells you this is a small enough project that one person can still field every email about it personally. That won't be true forever if the district keeps working through a multi-year list at this pace.
Why the Splash Pad's Hours Never Made Sense Until You Know This
If you visited Priory's new splash pad this summer and wondered why it only ran noon to 6 p.m. on weekdays and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends, the answer isn't arbitrary. The splash pad shares a water line with the park's irrigation system, and because of the pipe size, the two can't run at the same time. Irrigation runs overnight and again in the early morning to support the district's summer camp program, which uses the Priory Center from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Illinois Department of Public Health rules also require splash pad water to flow through rather than recirculate, so every minute of operation is metered against a water and sewer budget the board capped at $20,000 a year. Afternoon hours won because that's the hottest part of the day and it's also when families who work until 5 can actually get there.
The splash pad's season runs Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend, which means if you didn't get out there this past weekend, you've already missed the window until next May.
The Old Playground Went Further Than You'd Guess
The playground removed from Constitution Park didn't go to a landfill. It was donated to Kids Around the World, a nonprofit that disassembles used playground equipment, refurbishes it, and installs it in under-resourced communities abroad. The same organization handled the previous playground transitions at Keystone, Priory and Washington parks, which means River Forest has quietly sent four playgrounds overseas over the past several renovation cycles rather than scrapping them. It's a small detail that doesn't show up on any capital budget line, but it's the kind of thing that only becomes visible once you notice the pattern repeating park by park.
Your Actual September Calendar
Construction hasn't slowed down the district's event calendar. Here's what's actually on the books this month:
- Fall Football Kickoff, September 12
- Glow Run at Priory Park, September 18. Registration opened August 3 at $25 per person for ages 6 and up, with the registration deadline set for September 16 at noon.
- Family Campout at Priory Park, September 25-26. It's a green overnight camping event for all ages, one adult per family required, with campfire and s'mores included. You bring your own tent and sleeping bags.
None of these require the ballfield that's currently fenced off, which is presumably why the district didn't bother rescheduling anything around the Keystone closure.
The Pattern, Not Just the Punch List
None of this is really about splash pads or ballfields on their own. It's about what a village of just over 11,000 residents looks like when its park district commits to a multi-year plan and actually works the list instead of doing one big renovation and going quiet for a decade. Constitution Park and Priory Park took nine months of overlapping construction to deliver two finished spaces. Keystone Ballfield #2 will take about eleven weeks to deliver one. The fencing you're seeing this fall isn't a sign that something's gone wrong. It's what steady, sequenced capital spending looks like from inside the neighborhood it's happening in.
If you're watching this cycle from a house near Constitution or Keystone and you're curious what a freshly renovated park a block away actually does to how your own property shows or how it might be valued, that's the kind of question Larissa Brodsky works through with River Forest owners directly. Request your complimentary condo valuation to see where things stand today.
