Orland Trustees Approve 'Plain' Water Tower For East Side

ORLAND PARK, IL — Keep your eyes to the skies and you'll see a plain, white water tower imprinted with "Orland Park" on the village's east side in coming weeks.

Orland's trustees voted Monday night to adorn the tower set for rehab with the minimalist design in an attempt to save $40,000 on the project.

However, Mayor Keith Pekau suggested the contractor paint the village's name on two sides of the tower instead of the one shown in the plans. That added $14,000 in costs.

Confused? Some board members were a tad, too.

"We already decided on this, I thought," trustee Bill Healy said, asking for clarification about the vote.

He was referring to a decision earlier this month when the board of trustees nixed a decorative option for the water tower that was developed as a gesture of goodwill to disgruntled business owners who had complained they have been long overlooked by village officials. That design, with a brick wall and prairie grass, added $40,000 to the roughly half-million-dollar project. Several trustees, including Cynthia Nelson Katsenes, said that was too much.

The board decided to revisit the issue at Monday's meeting to look at designs for a "white" option and to clarify whether a sandblasting option would extend the life of the tower and justify an extra cost. On Monday, however, for reasons not explained, the board reviewed the "white" option, known as Option B, as well as a "brick" option with prairie grass drawings removed, known as Option A. Pekau had to explain several times that trustees were voting only on Option B, which was the recommendation in the motion trustee Michael Milani read.

The 48-year-old tower is in good condition, village documents show, but the Illinois EPA recommended that officials fix paint problems to avoid further troubles. The tower at the northwest corner of Harlem Avenue and Wheeler Drive is the first of seven the village will rehabilitate in coming years.

Earlier this month, Trustee Kathleen Fenton explained to the board that business owners on that side of Orland said that they feel like they have been forgotten because of the number of vacant properties that remain at the corridor and because of other maintenance problems. Adding an image of a brick wall and prairie grass to the otherwise undecorated tower was intended to show the village takes extra steps to make the area attractive to residents, visitors and business owners, she said.

She stuck to that message Monday night. Because she is chairwoman of the public works committee, which was tasked with the water tower rehabilitation project, she could have made a motion about the designs presented to the board. Fenton explained why she opted to remain silent and let Milani read the motion instead.

"I am not happy with either one of them," she said. "In option one, without the trees, it looks silly and I think option B is too plain," she said. "We had an opportunity to do something attractive," she said.

In the end, the board voted for the white design, or Option B. Trustees Jim Dodge and Fenton dissented. Fenton also voted against painting the village's name twice on the tower. She was the sole no vote.

The board awarded the contract to Era-Valdivia Contractors of Chicago for $639,670. It includes the sandblasting Milani asked about, which is expected to extend the life of the tower by at least 25 years. It does not include the $14,000 for the design change.

Katsenes, Pekau said, also asked that a motto "Crown Jewel of Chicago Southland" be added to the tower. She did not attend the meeting because she had a family emergency, he said. The request was not put to a vote, but Pekau said the issue could come back to the board another time.