Why Gilbert Park’s Tennis Court Rebuild Is Taking Years—and How Two Grants Are Funding It
According to Shaw Local's July 2023 report, a resident walked over to Gilbert Park for a match in July of 2022 and found three of the four courts wrapped in padlocked fencing, no warning, no sign explaining why. The nets were still up. The lines were still painted. The courts just weren't available to use anymore.
That image, a fenced-off court in a park where kids ride bikes and dog walkers loop the paths every morning, is the starting point for a story that's still playing out this fall. What's happening at Gilbert Park and its sister courts at Sedgwick Park right now isn't a routine parks refresh. It's a new round of work following the earlier repair, with funding from the state and the USTA.
The tennis courts at Gilbert Park sit on land owned by La Grange School District 105, but for three consecutive ten-year stretches, the Park District of La Grange handled the maintenance. That arrangement lapsed in July 2022. The park district chose not to renew it, citing limited resources, and without a maintenance agreement in place, the school district's insurer flagged the surface cracks as a liability risk serious enough to close the courts rather than leave them open.
Three courts went dark overnight. A fourth stayed open. For a neighborhood where tennis is a daily habit for a lot of people, not an occasional hobby, that was a real loss, not a minor inconvenience. A resident named David Wong, who lives across the street from the courts, started a petition. It collected 452 signatures, which is a meaningful number for a village this size.
It took more than a year for the two governing bodies to work it out. In June 2023, the park district and school district reached a new agreement, and Midwest Sports began repairing the cracked surfaces that same month, ahead of the mid-July timeline officials had projected. The repair cost $85,000, funded by the park district's own budget, and it did what it was designed to do: it filled the cracks, restored the surface, and got the padlocks off.
The courts reopened under the same maintenance arrangement as before, with the Park District of La Grange maintaining land owned by La Grange School District 105.
The current round of work looks different, and the difference is where the money comes from. In January 2025, the Park District of La Grange received a $600,000 OSLAD grant from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, paired with funds from a passed referendum. OSLAD money doesn't come with strings attached to a single fix. It's designed for exactly the kind of multi-amenity overhaul Gilbert Park is getting:
Then, later in 2026, the district layered on a second, more targeted grant: $100,000 from the United States Tennis Association, earmarked specifically for the tennis court improvements at Gilbert Park. That's not redundant money. It's the difference between a state grant that has to stretch across six different park features and a dedicated pool for the court work.
The OSLAD and USTA grants both support work at the courts, while the earlier repairs were funded through the park district's budget.
Gilbert Park isn't the only site in motion. Sedgwick Park, which also has four tennis courts, received its own $600,000 OSLAD grant to support referendum-funded improvements there, and the district has already installed new energy-efficient LED lighting on site.
Sedgwick's path hit one wrinkle Gilbert's didn't. Ahead of construction, the district took deep soil borings at Sedgwick as a standard precaution and, based on what those borings turned up, voluntarily enrolled the site in the state's remediation program. That sounds more alarming than it is. The same testing that triggered the enrollment also confirmed the site meets the most stringent environmental standards and remains safe for play. The enrollment is a protective step for contractors and residents during construction, not a sign that anything at Sedgwick is unsafe to walk on today.
Here's where things stood as of the district's most recent construction update: work at both Gilbert and Sedgwick was originally targeted to begin in spring 2026, then pushed to mid-to-late May while the district waited on final permitting. The district has been upfront that these dates are subject to change and has promised updates as they become available, which means the honest answer for anyone checking court availability this month is to look at the Park District of La Grange's own park improvements page rather than assume either project has wrapped.
A few things are true regardless of where construction stands. The district's new nine-hole disc golf course is open and playable right now, a genuinely new option for anyone who's exhausted the usual loop through the neighborhood. Open pickleball continues at the Recreation Center for players who want a court that isn't tied up in any of this. And barring a change to the usual pattern, tennis and volleyball nets across the district's parks come down for the season in November and don't go back up until March, so anyone hoping to get outdoor court time in before winter has a real, if narrowing, window.
If Gilbert or Sedgwick's courts are still fenced when that seasonal net removal happens, it won't mean the project stalled. It will mean the work is running on a construction calendar, not a tennis calendar, and that the fix underway now was built to survive longer than the one that came before it.
The difference from 2022 is that the current work has support from the OSLAD and USTA grants, while the district's updates will provide the latest information about reopening.
If you're already part of this community, keep an eye on the district's updates as the season turns. And if you're the kind of person who notices when a town takes care of the small things well, that's usually a sign worth paying attention to for bigger decisions too. If you ever want to talk about what's happening in La Grange beyond the parks, Anne Hodge is always glad to connect.
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