Let's Honor Our Park District's Legacy of Leadership

My name is Jay Graham. I grew up in the Oak Park and Rockford Park Districts. My Dad, Bill Graham, worked in both organizations. He was Director in Oak Park when Webbs Norman recruited him to the Rockford Park District to, among many other things, supervise design and construction of Riverview Ice House.

In both park districts, I held many jobs myself, from flipping burgers to supervising play in neighborhood parks (as a “Parkie”) to coaching hockey and driving the Zamboni to sharpening skates to cleaning locker rooms to checking Riverview’s compressors to opening its doors on dark, cold winter mornings and locking them down late at night. 

When I graduated from college, I returned to Rockford and jobs at the MetroCentre and Council of 100 (now BMO and RAEDC). In both these phases of my life, I witnessed amazing, talented people like Webbs Norman, Mayor John McNamara, MetroCentre GM Doug Logan, Council of 100 chief John Holub, my dad Bill Graham, Wendy Perks Fisher, the first CEO of RACVB, Park board commissioners John B Whitehead, Jo Baker, Ed Carlson, deeply committed City Council members,  State Reps Zeke Giorigi and John Hallock, Congresswoman Lynn Martin and others as they rejected despair and made change in this community. 

The leaders’ heroic efforts took place at a time when local unemployment had skyrocketed to 26% and manufacturing jobs were fleeing the United States. They always worked together, inspired each other, supported each other. And they succeeded in accomplishing great things too numerous to list tonight.  

I saw the power of the Park District’s decision to locate Riverview downtown - specifically to spur our critical urban core’s re-development. The decision was soon followed by the City of Rockford’s and MetroCentre Authority decision to locate the BMO arena downtown. In all, $1 billion of public and private investment has occurred in downtown Rockford in just the last 15 years. My team and I have built our business downtown.

Now, though, as it relates to Riverview Ice House specifically, I see something different. 

I see the Rockford Park District has returned to the same intractable position it announced to vehement disappointment in 2014: the idea of demolishing Riverview Ice House, the jewel of our urban core’s renewal, selling the land that sits under it and moving its ice miles far northeast to the edge of Loves Park. Apparently, the fact the Park District will rip away hundreds of thousands of annual visitors to the renewed downtown riverfront in the process is of little consequence.  

I see the Rockford Park District has kicked to the curb the Ice Facilities Committee - a committee Jay Sandine himself convened in 2017/18, of which I was a member. I see the Rockford Park District’s intention to abandon City of Rockford users, fee-payers and taxpayers during a global pandemic that threatens many downtown businesses with extinction - both in its Riverview decision as well as a parallel one to eliminate UW Health Sports Factory’s subsidy.  

I see no discussion of the value of Riverview’s Studio Rink: RPD’s most popular sheet of ice. I heard a park commissioner this evening say our views amount to little more than “sentimentality.” I see a false dichotomy of Rockford vs Loves Park. 

I see the Rockford Park District’s intention to place all its ice facilities out of reach of most of our city’s poor and minority citizens, who mostly dwell near our urban core. Yours is an organization that has earned the tab, “the best urban park system in the United States.” Your staff’s rationale for making these decisions?  You say you must concentrate on neighborhood parks. This begs the question why you’re so willing to destroy our downtown neighborhood in the process. I know from first-hand experience just how great neighborhood parks can be, by the way. I learned that in the late 1970s working as a Parkie supervising play and teaching kids games and putting theory into practice. 

Of COURSE investing in neighborhood parks, which are already ubiquitous and within reach of nearly all citizens, is a great idea. But, so is restoring an aging ice rink to it former glory. And let me remind you, the Rockford Park District has known Riverview was aging for decades. It’s ice making system today is the same one I helped maintain in 1976 when the facility was first opened.   

Parks and ice rinks are mutually exclusive concepts - and the notion Riverview must be stripped from downtown to fund neighborhood parks seems ill-conceived. 

The staff’s support for its position is a survey that asked area citizens if they care about neighborhood parks. Asking a group of Americans if they like neighborhood parks is akin to asking them if they like hamburgers. The survey process will be addressed in additional comments this evening by Jeff Fahrenwald who played a role in the early design of the survey. He will be critical. 

It seems to me the Rockford Park District has lost sight of the tremendous value it created when it built Riverview Ice House. You should be proud of that value and embrace it. It’s priceless. Riverview Ice House is like a home. The family it houses are countless brothers and sisters who have skated there over the decades. As a family, we are all connected by our common passion for ice sports in that special place your predecessors created. 

Riverview, in the heart of downtown Rockford, it’s where our family’s treasured memories have been made, and it is THE founding anchor of downtown Rockford’s economic and cultural revival. You proud Rockford Park District people are members of that family, of course.  Families don’t abandon each other during times of strife. What ever happened to the Ice Facilities Committee - a group Jay Sandine himself said was his “top committee” in 2018? Why was this most recent decision to abandon downtown made in isolation? 

Let us ask ourselves - what would Webbs Norman, John McNamara, Doug Logan, John Holub, Wendy Perks Fisher, Jo Baker, John B Whitehead, Ed Carlson, Zeke Giorgi, John Hallock, Lynn Martin, Bill Graham and their private sector partners do at a time like this?  I think we all know the answer to that question. 

Please; let’s honor their legacy of leadership and work together for the best outcome for our whole community. We stand ready to help.