Cedar Hall is gone. At the former Tinley Park Mental Health Center, the Park District's October 8 update reports that the building has been demolished, with its foundation still to be pulled. Crews are also backfilling the very deep footprint left by Oak Hall. Head south toward 191st Street and the I80 Dome's website carries a simpler message: "Opening November 2026."
Both sites are slated for sports, and both sit in the stretch of southwest Tinley Park bounded by 183rd and 191st streets. Only one of them will have people playing on it this winter. The private dome had to fix storm damage. The public land has to meet the cleanup standard Illinois treats most carefully, which is recreational use, and nothing about its future can be settled until that's done. So the next milestone at 183rd and Harlem will happen underground, and it starts before Thanksgiving.
The south end opens with pickleball, batting cages and a sports bar
The Interstate Sports Dome sits at 7600 W. 191st St. on the former Gray Stone Golf Course. According to the Village of Tinley Park's current projects page, developer GK Development LLC planned a 142,000-square-foot main dome, a 35,000-square-foot supplemental dome and an 18,000-square-foot support building for a potential restaurant and a sports medicine facility. Extra outlots will be marketed for retail and restaurants.
The opening date has already moved once. In late July, Patch reported that storms damaged the dome before it opened. Fox 32 Chicago reported that the fabric needed replacing and that the operator expected about six weeks to rebuild. The Village's September 2026 update puts the dome's opening in November and the restaurant's in December. No public source yet gives an exact opening day or confirms the repairs are finished, so November is still a target.
Here's what the I80 Dome lists for when the doors open:
- Six multipurpose turf fields, 14 batting cages and six pickleball courts.
- Baseball and softball rentals, with cage time and diamond bookings on the rental and calendar pages.
- In A Pickle Pickleball for adults and teens, with open play, leagues, court reservations, beginner programs and community events.
- Apex Pitching Performance and Apex Sports Performance, which focus on mechanics, velocity and measured training gains.
- TK's Clubhouse Bar & Grill, a full-service, sports-bar-style restaurant with burgers, shareables and drinks. It's open to the public, so you don't need a game ticket to eat there.
No sports medicine tenant has been announced. The outlots don't have named businesses yet.
The north end's next step is more than 1,000 holes in the ground
Up at 183rd Street and Harlem Avenue, the former Mental Health Center covers 280 acres. The Park District's October 8, 2026 "Remediate 280" presentation shows how far the work has come and how much is left. Safe Environmental, the asbestos subcontractor, has finished abatement in every building. Brandenburg Industrial Services has moved on to demolition, while a third-party firm, True North, monitors the air.
Here's where the demolition stood on each building as of that update:
- Oak Hall, Building 4: backfilling underway
- Willow Hall, Building 5: all foundations removed, with backfill to follow once Oak Hall is done
- Power Plant, Building 20: foundation still to be removed
- Cedar Hall, Building 23: demolished, with the foundation and cleanup remaining
That's real progress. The Chicago Tribune reported that 13 of 53 buildings were still standing in late June, with demolition expected by the end of 2026. Remediation overseer Renee Cipriano said only deeper concrete footings or collecting stormwater were likely to delay it. The perimeter fencing will stay up through Phase Two.
Why recreational land faces the slowest approval
The district has enrolled the property in the Illinois EPA Site Remediation Program to get a No Further Remediation letter. To move faster, it filed separate investigation plans for three areas of the site. The Tribune reported Cipriano's view that remediation could be lengthy because recreational use is one of the IEPA's most protected approvals.
The October 8 presentation spells out the remaining sequence:
- Bids. Drilling and sampling bids were opened September 18 and 21. The only laboratory bid was rejected because it lacked the required bid security, so that solicitation is being reissued, with new bids opening October 27.
- Award. The district expects its board to award the bids in early November so fieldwork can start before Thanksgiving.
- Sampling. Crews will drill more than 1,000 borings across the 280 acres, many sampled at several depths, and test groundwater, sediment and surface water where they find it.
- Reports and the letter. Once the IEPA finds that the property meets every standard for recreational use, it issues a comprehensive No Further Remediation letter. The presentation says that letter means the site is "ready for redevelopment." Two former underground storage tank areas already have one.
The Tribune reported Cipriano's estimate that the full remediation could take at least a year from the start of sampling. If fieldwork starts in late November 2026, that points to late 2027 at the earliest before the site is cleared for redevelopment. No public opening date has been announced.
The money for this phase is already in place. The district received a $15 million state cleanup grant in 2023 and another $18 million in June 2025. Cipriano told the Tribune that the second grant is meant to finish abatement, demolition and remediation.
What the land can become, and why the plan isn't final yet
The rules on what the site can hold were set before any cleanup began. The State transferred the property to the Park District for $1, and officials marked the handoff in February 2024. Public Act 103-0544 limits the land to public purposes such as recreation and conservation and bars gambling. It also returns the property to the State if the district sells it or breaks those conditions. The Village had pursued the site for years, backing away from a potential purchase in 2015 and seeing a later deal fall through in 2022, and it had floated commercial and mixed-use concepts.
The Park District's 2025 vision for the first 90 acres included five baseball fields, six multipurpose athletic fields, a domed soccer field, a stadium with a running track, an accessible playground and a pond. Board President Lisa O'Donovan told the Tribune that this west-end section along 80th Avenue would be developed first, as an extension of Freedom Park. In the same interview she described the funding position this way:
"At this point, we're not just quite there yet, in terms of funding it. That's always been our main focus — making sure that it's cleaned up in a proper way so that it was safe for all of our community."
According to the Tribune's report, the final uses, cost and funding are all still open. O'Donovan said community feedback will shape the plan. Residents have suggested pickleball courts, community gardens and open space. Private developers have made offers, and the district told them to come back after cleanup. Possible funding sources include public-private partnerships, state funding and the district's regular budget.
That's why the two ends are moving at different speeds. Pickleball is one of the ideas residents raised for the public site. On 191st Street, In A Pickle's courts are scheduled to open within weeks. At 183rd and Harlem, nothing can be decided until the soil results come back.
The road that links them is being rebuilt too
Will County is widening and rebuilding 80th Avenue from 191st Street to 183rd Street, according to the Village's projects page. The work adds two 12-foot through lanes in each direction, an 18-foot barrier median and new or modified signals at 185th and 183rd streets. It also includes a 190-foot bridge over Union Drainage Ditch with a 15-foot multiuse path. The Village's May 2026 update warned of shifting lane patterns at 80th and 191st while crews repaved the intersection, and said the final asphalt layer was expected later in the summer. When the planned 90 acres eventually open along 80th Avenue, this rebuilt road and path will run past them.
Tinley Park dates to know through December
- October 25: Boo Bash at Harmony Square, 6700 North St., from noon to 4 p.m.
- October 27: Reissued laboratory bids for the Remediate 280 soil program open
- Early November: Park District board expected to award the sampling contracts
- November: I80 Dome's target opening
- November 20: The Village lights its brand-new 44-foot Christmas tree at Harmony Square at 6 p.m., with a sing-along starting at 5:30
- Before Thanksgiving: Soil borings expected to begin at 183rd and Harlem
- December: TK's Clubhouse Bar & Grill is slated to open, and the Residence Inn at 179th Street and LaGrange Road is set to open the same month
Christine Wilczek and Jason Bacza follow projects like the I80 Dome and the Remediate 280 cleanup because they change how a part of town works day to day. If you own a home in southwest Tinley Park and want to know how what's happening between 183rd and 191st fits into your home's current value, request a free home valuation and we'll go over it with you.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
