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THE REGIONAL NEWS Named best small weekly in Illinois five times by the Illinois Press Association
Thursday, March 31, 2016
Serving Palos, Orland and Worth townships and neighboring communities
75th Year, NO. 13 • 2 Sections
Saved: Orland Health & Fitness Center Land swap a win-win-win for village, hospital and PHFC members By Jack Murray
Regional News editor Who knew? Palos Health & Fitness Center will stay open and running as the result of a preliminary agreement worked out between Palos Community Hospital and the village of Orland Park. Mayor Daniel McLaughlin and hospital officials negotiated for weeks on the terms of the deal contained in a memorandum of understanding they announced in a joint statement Wednesday morning last week. The deal provides for a land swap that Mayor McLaughlin described in an interview Monday at The Regional
News office as a mutually beneficial arrangement that is a win, win for all parties concerned, including the members determined to save Palos Health & Fitness Center from being closed by the hospital on May 1. The hospital will donate to the village 10 acres of land that hold the fitness center, its parking lot and grounds, McLaughlin said. The village will own the fitness center, which contains two swimming pools, and add its operations under the recreation department. Meantime, he expects Power Wellness will continue to manage the fitness center “at least for a couple of years.” Fittingly, the site overlooks the village’s outdoor
pool, the Centennial Park aquatic center. In return, the village will give the hospital 3 to 4.5 acres of land west of land owned by the hospital to the west of its Palos Primary Care Center, 15300 West Ave. The village will pay the costs of mitigating those wetlands, which the mayor estimates will be about $150,000. Mitigating wetlands means moving them by creating new ones under a regulatory red-tape regime enforced by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That land traded to the hospital will give it room to construct any future expansion plans it may decide to pursue beside its $133.2 million project for a medical office building with underground parking
added to its primary care south campus. That project won state approval Tuesday. It would cost the village as much as $6 million to build an indoor swimming pool addition to the village Sportsplex, the mayor noted. Village officials have grappled for years weighing the costs to add an indoor pool to its recreational amenities, he said. “I feel a lot better taking this over at very little or no cost,” he referred to the fitness center’s two indoor swimming pools, one a warm-water therapy pool. “I am really hesitant to spend $5 million to $6 million for a pool, money that I would rather see be used for roads.” Also in return for the fitness center, the village will cover the costs of redesigning the parking and access roadways for
the hospital’s expansion project. That’s a relatively small cost that is only fair to reimburse the hospital, McLaughlin said. “After all they put money into it.” A certificate of need permitting the hospital’s Orland Park campus plan was approved by state regulators at a meeting held Tuesday in Bolingbrook. “We appreciate the village of Orland Park’s collaborative efforts and interest in preserving the fitness center, while helping Palos move forward with this important investment in our community,” hospital vice president Tim Brosnan said in a statement Tuesday in response to the permit approval. “This modernization project is about fulfilling our commitment to bringing state-of-the-art health care to See FITNESS CENTER, Page 3
SENTENCING
Killer of Rice teacher gets just 15 years By Dermot Connolly
Children’s Farm colors our world for Easter
Photo by Dermot Connolly
Sisters Kylie, Julia and Kendall Barham, of Palos Park, and their cousins Gabby Daviduke and Madison Akkawi show the eggs they collected from the chicken coop and then colored during the Easter Egg Roundup at the Children’s Farm in Palos Park. The annual event attracts hundred of people the Saturday before Easter. For more, see Page 2.
Doughs Guys Bakery gets concession to open shop in Palos Park train depot By Michael Gilbert A new morning café stop is ready to set up shop inside Palos Park’s Metra train depot. The Village Council Monday unanimously approved a commercial sublease with Doughs Guys Bakery to operate the vendor station inside the train station, 123rd Street and 82nd Avenue. The agreement was originally to begin April 30, but Village Manager Rick Boehm asked village commissioners to move up the effective date to March 30, as he
was optimistic the bakery could take over the concession stand by the end of this month. That would be good news for commuters since the 10-year-old station has been without a food vendor for the past few weeks after Palos Perk Café ceased operations there.
“We kind of had an abrupt ending with our last lease [with Palos Perk Café] when the concessionary walked off the job at the station,” Boehm said. “We were fortunate enough to find a willing vendor in Doughs Guys Bakery.” The bakery, which is headquartered in Palos Heights inside the former Baumann’s Bakery storefront, 12248 S. Harlem Ave., also operates the concession stand at two Metra stations in Orland Park and one in Oak Forest. “We have some knowledge [of Doughs Guys], and they come
recommended by those agencies,” Boehm said. “We’ve worked with them before at events and they’ve always done very well for themselves and for their customers.” Doughs Guys has been a vendor at previous Palos Park events, including the Autumn in the Park and the Concert in the Park festivals, Boehm noted. The bakery outlet in Palos Park’s train depot will be open from 5 to 9 a.m. Monday through Friday and will sell a variety of sweet rolls, coffees, hot chocolate, fruit, juices, See PALOS PARK, Page 2
A 15-year sentence for the woman convicted of stabbing a Brother Rice High School teacher to death is under fire as too lenient by his friends and followers of the case. Alisha Walker, 23, was sentenced last Thursday to 15 Walker years in prison for the murder of Al Filan, whom she stabbed repeatedly, in his Orland Park home in January 2014. Walker had been convicted of second-degree murder on Jan. 14 in the same Bridgeview courtroom of Judge James Obbish. At most, she could have been sentenced to 20 years. Filan, 61, taught at Brother Rice for nearly 40 years, heading the school’s business studies department, and coaching basketball and soccer. He also had coached soccer at Andrew High School for more than 10 years. Following the sentencing, people posting on a Facebook page titled Remembering Al Filan, argued that she got off easy. She will be credited with the two years she has already served since being arrested in a Fort Wayne, Ind., motel soon after Filan’s body was found in his home on Jan. 18, 2014. Walker will also be entitled to day-for-day credit toward her sentence. “Only 15 years for murdering another person. Where is the justice in this. She will be out in six to seven years. Our justice system does not value life any more,”
Bill Dekker commented on the Al Filan tribute page. According to testimony given at her trial, Walker stabbed Filan 14 times after they argued inside his home in the 9400 block of Georgetown Square. She and Filan met through the website Backpage. com, and had previous sexual encounters. They had allegedly arranged for Walker to bring another prostitute with her, which she did. Prosecutors maintained that Filan agreed to pay the women $150 each for a half-hour of sex. But according to reports, Filan argued because the woman did not look like the person advertised in Backpage.com. Walker’s attorney, Patrick O’Byrne, asserted that Walker acted in self-defense after Filan’s request for a threesome and unprotected sex was denied. Walker said in a taped statement to police that was played at her trial that Filan physically attacked her, and she wrestled the knife from him. But prosecutors said there were no defensive wounds on her when she was interviewed five days later. Filan’s family asked that Obbish impose the maximum sentence. Addressing the family, Walker is quoted as saying in her only statement from the stand, “I never intended for this to happen. All I can do is apologize to you.” Walker, then a 21-year-old prostitute from Ohio, was held without bail in the Cook County Jail after her arrest. Investigators found multiple ads from an online female escort service on the desk in Filan’s home. Also, the veteran teacher
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See KILLER, Page 2