Toboggan slides a slippery issue

Daily Southtown

September 5, 2007

By Jonathan Lipman

For the third time in three years, private operators have shown little interest in taking over the run-down toboggan slides at Swallow Cliff.

Over the summer, the Cook County Forest Preserve District asked for proposals from companies interested in fixing up the popular slides, which have been closed since late 2004 due to disrepair.

But the only response was a company the district board has previously rejected.

"We find ourselves as back at square one as we could be," forest preserve spokesman Steve Mayberry said.

One of the entrepreneurs who decided against bidding on the project said the district is asking the impossible.

"The whole cost to fix it up started out at $150,000, and I came up to $1.5 million," said Ron Urban, the Palos Heights owner of International Ice Shows. "They (the county) won't pick up anything ... and then, of course, they want rent."

The issue goes before the board at today's meeting and will likely be sent to committee.

The slides need so much snow to operate, they have been open only 44 times since 1998. The district began seeking a private vendor to take over the slides in 2004.

That first attempt yielded only one interested bidder who wanted to offer "zorbing" at the slides, which would involve rolling patrons down the slides in giant inflatable balls.

"The feeling of the board was that it wasn't a practical application for our slides," Mayberry said.

The district sought a company to take over management of all its concessions, including the slides, in 2005, but talks with the only interested company broke down.

In March of this year, the district released a report that said fixing the 14 slides at Swallow Cliff and four other locations would cost $3.7 million. The board told staff to try one last time for a private vendor. The hope was a vendor would be willing to pay for most of the rehab work.

But this latest request again yielded only one company - zorbing again.

Urban, who had planned to submit a proposal for artificial surfaces on the toboggan slides, a year-round skating rink and a bobsled run, said the site was too run-down to make it profitable.

"I went out there with Commonwealth Edison ... they said it will cost you $400,000 to $500,000 to put power at the concession stand," Urban said. "Then we needed water. They have sufficient water for two sinks there. That's it."

LaGrange businessman Shawn Temple, who pitched a plan for a year-round, winter-sports amusement park before a board committee in March, did not submit a bid. Mayberry said the district contacted him several times.

Calls to Temple and his Wisconsin business partner were not returned.

Commissioner Liz Gorman (R-Orland Park) said the company was scared off the project by Daily Southtown stories detailing her connection to Temple, who was her campaign finance director.

"They took their dollars elsewhere because of the negative press," Gorman said.

Gorman, a strong advocate for rebuilding the slides, said she'll press for the district to seek another round of bids.

"Hopefully the board will be patient," Gorman said. "They've been patient this long."

But the board's finance chairman, Mike Quigley (D-Chicago), said he opposed spending a lot of money to save the slides.

"The forest preserves are supposed to be about open space, natural settings," Quigley said.

"We shouldn't spend a lot of money building slides."

Copyright 2007, Sun-Times News Group

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