Bo Jackson Dome For Joliet? Terry D'Arcy Draws Crowd To Town Hall

JOLIET, IL — During his annual state of the city presentation two weeks ago, Joliet Mayor Bob O'Dekirk revealed plans to draw a car battery recycling plant and green energy jobs to the long abandoned U.S. Steel plant. On Monday night, O'Dekirk's opponent, Terry D'Arcy, suggested Joliet can do better than that.

A crowd of roughly 160 to 180 area residents packed into the Stone City VFW on Route 53 for D'Arcy's first "Town Hall with Terry" as part of his campaign in hopes of defeating O'Dekirk in the April 4 elections.

At Monday's two-hour event, D'Arcy revealed plans to tap into his personal friendship with legendary NFL and Major League Baseball star, Bo Jackson, in hopes of drawing more tourism dollars to the city.

D'Arcy brought up Bo Jackson Elite Sports during a question asked his plans for downtown Joliet.

During the weekdays, several thousand people visit downtown Joliet for work, "then they leave, and it's a ghost town, it's dark," D'Arcy told everyone. "So my thought is, if we could get student housing downtown, now you're going to bring some young people in there. You're going to bring life. We've got the University of St. Francis. They don't want to build any more dorms off on their campus. They want dorms down in the City Center. They want to bring those kids downtown.

"Joliet Junior College has a culinary arts program, and I'm sure they could use some of those dorms ... that would be a way to spur that. And then I know that the mayor has talked about the old U.S. Steel property, now this I'm going to go out on a limb a little bit, bear with me."

D'Arcy told his captivated crowd that the U.S. Steel property has been vacant, and it's been a blight to our community for a long time.

"But as I see how the city has grown, that property is really part of the heart of our city. And I've been talking to a friend of mine, a guy that I was on a bank board with, and I've known him for over 14 years. His name is Bo Jackson. Bo Jackson's a baseball and football player.

"Maybe Bo knows," D'Arcy said, drawing a number of laughs.

"So, Bo and I have been talking about, you know he told me I was a little crazy to run for mayor, but I said, 'Bo, I want to do some work here in the city, one last thing.' And he and I were talking about what he's been doing with his company, Bo Jackson Elite Sports.

"So the newest thing that Bo's been doing with his team, they're developing what they call tournament centers. And he's got some of them around the country right now ... they take the domes. There's one coming out of Rosemont ... they're doing 130,000 square-foot Bo Domes and on a 30 to 40 acre campus, they're including hotels, restaurants and ways for families to pull in."

D'Arcy said if anybody in the audience has ever been involved in youth sports, "You get to the destination on Thursday and your kids play once or twice during the day for two or three days."

According to D'Arcy, Jackson's plans for his ever-expanding tournament domes is "he's developing these things where they have hotels, restaurants and recreation right there. And I thought rather than have a battery recycling spot right in the middle of our town, perhaps, we could have a Bo Dome, or a tournament area. And you know, there's a lot of property over there. We could turn some of that property into outdoor sports. We've got soccer, we've got baseball. There's a lot of things we could do with that."

From D'Arcy's perspective, if you add college student housing downtown and the U.S. Steel property can become a tournament-style sports complex, "you start to develop back into the city, and I was just in Dallas for a meeting, and they've got a really cool town square that's artificial turf, hard surface, you walk up and the side of the building is this huge video wall. And when I look at our downtown across from the Rialto, we've owned that property for seven years, and now all of a sudden 'we're going to start to come up with a plan.'"

D'Arcy said he remembered several years ago when someone approached him about the idea of holding a New Orleans North event in downtown Joliet.

The person asked, "How do you think that would work?" D'Arcy recalled. "I said, well, let's give it a shot ... now that brings 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 people ... my picture of that property would be that we'd have soft curves all around that whole Chicago Street area ... now, you've got great space for festival use ... where they've got that big mural, you put a big video wall up there, and I've seen parking decks in different parts of the country that they put facades. It looks like other office buildings, but it's not, it's just a parking deck, but it doesn't look like a parking deck. That's the synergy we could start getting with our downtown. You get the Bo (Jackson) tournament area, you get the student housing. We need a City Center again. You know, we're a city of 150,000 people. And when I travel, I don't say I from near Chicago, I'm from Joliet, Illinois."

D'Arcy paused for a few seconds as several people in his audience started to clap.

"I've been called a carpetbagger," D'Arcy told everyone. "So, my mom and dad got married in 1949, my dad is a fourth generation Jolietan. The very first one came here from Ireland in 1850, clearing some land along the river, got all the trees down and farmed it. And from then on, there's been a D'Arcy in Joliet. But when my dad married my mom, we all know that women run the world, he moved to Plainfield. So, I grew up in Plainfield, but at 18 years old, after high school, I didn't go to school. I became an ironworker. I moved to Joliet, and I lived here for 10 years.

"And I stumbled into the car business at the same time. So I've been living back in Joliet for the last couple years again, but I call myself a corporate resident. I love Joliet and when I tell people I'm from Joliet, I get the response, 'Oh, the Blues Brothers, the prison, or, I know this guy, or I know that guy.' But it's a great community, and we are all proud of it and want to continue to make Joliet the proud city that we are."

Notable attendees: At Monday night's event, Joliet Patch saw or spoke with several well-known public officials, politicians or city of Joliet candidates including:

Joliet City Council District 4 candidates Cesar Cardenas and Christopher J. Parker, who are trying to replace retiring Councilwoman Bettye Gavin. Joliet City Council District 5 candidates Jim Lanham, Suzanna Ibarra and Michael Carruthers, who are trying to defeat three-term incumbent Terry Morris. Also in the audience were: retired Joliet City Councilman at-large Mike Turk, District 86 State Representative Larry Walsh Jr., Elwood Police Sgt. Marc Reid, who is a retired Joliet police lieutenant, retired Joliet Junior College President J.D. Ross, and Garland Mays, chairman of the Joliet Township Democrats.