State Has $15 Million On Table For Mental Health Center Cleanup

TINLEY PARK, IL — The state of Illinois could spend up to $15 million to clean up the Tinley Park Mental Health Center property that has been left vacant since it closed in 2012. House Bill 0064, which includes that amount for the cleanup of the property, has passed through both the Illinois House and Illinois Senate and is only awaiting a signature from Gov. J.B. Pritzker. It will go into effect on July 1 if signed.

"The sum of $15,000,000, or so much thereof as may be necessary, is appropriated from the Build Illinois Bond Fund to the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity for a grant to the Tinley Park Mental Health Center for costs associated with environmental cleanup," the bill states.

All buildings on the long-vacant property at the northwest corner of 183rd and Harlem were found to be filled with asbestos and black mold, an Illinois Environmental Protection Agency inspection found last December. Various barrels of unlabeled contaminants were also found throughout the property.

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Nancy O'Connor, a Tinley Park resident who filed a Freedom of Information Act request to uncover the results of the inspection, said an IEPA representative told her officials will be seeking bids to test the water that's developed outside Oak Hall, one of the buildings that flooded, that came as a result of scrappers pulling copper from the site.

The $15 million won't be enough to fund the entire cleanup, however, as O'Connor said estimates have come in at more than $21 million for a complete cleanup of the site.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, state officials confirmed they were in talks with the village of Tinley Park to sell the 280-acre property. The state has owned it since the Mental Health Center first opened during the 1950s.

Now that a number of restrictions have been lifted at the state level, it appears the project is back to the table.

"It is coming back," O'Connor said. "We didn't want to let it go. But the state was shut down so what are you going to do."