River Forest Fenced Off Three Parks This Year. Here's What Was Behind Each One.

If you've walked or driven past Constitution Park on Greenfield Street any time since last September, you've spent a full year looking at chain-link. Same story a few blocks over at Priory Park, where the fencing went up in November. For most of the past twelve months, River Forest has had at least one, and often two, of its parks closed at the same time. That's not typical for a village this size, and it wasn't an accident of aging infrastructure falling apart all at once. It was three separate capital projects, sequenced so tightly that the ribbon-cutting for one happened a single day before the ribbon-cutting for the next.

This fall is the first stretch since the work began where you can actually see the full picture: two parks reopened, remade almost completely, and one still behind a fence with an end date on the calendar.

The Order This Actually Happened In

Constitution Park went first. Demolition of the old playground started September 17, 2025, with the rest of the park closing to the public on September 23. Priory Park followed about seven weeks later, with its section closing for construction on November 12. Both projects ran through the winter and spring, and both wrapped with ribbon-cutting ceremonies within a day of each other: Constitution on July 8, 2026, and Priory on July 9.

Keystone Ballfield #2 is the one still in progress. It closed on August 31, 2026, and the River Forest Park District's own construction schedule has it reopening November 13. As of this September, that closure is only about three weeks old, with roughly two months of fencing still to go.

Both of the finished projects ran later than their original public timelines. The Priory splash pad was originally floated for a Memorial Day 2026 debut. It opened about six weeks after that instead. Constitution's public schedule pointed to a June 2026 finish; it landed in July. Neither delay is unusual for municipal construction, but if you were watching the fencing and wondering why the parks still weren't open on the dates you'd heard, that's why.

What Constitution Park Actually Got

The old Constitution Park playground is gone, and not in the sense of being torn out and hauled to a landfill. It was donated to a nonprofit called Kids Around the World, which specializes in taking down used playground equipment, refurbishing it, and installing it in communities abroad that otherwise wouldn't have one. This isn't a one-time gesture. The same organization previously handled the Keystone, Priory, and Washington playground removals for River Forest. Between those three projects and Constitution, the Park District has now cycled at least four of the village's playgrounds through the same donation pipeline rather than scrapping them.

In its place is a new all-inclusive playground, plus a genuinely different kind of amenity: lighted sand volleyball courts that convert into an ice rink in the winter. There's also a new picnic shelter with men's and women's restrooms, a community sitting plaza, and a baseball field with relocated 60-foot basepaths. It's a full reshuffling of the park's footprint, not a patch job on the existing layout.

What Priory Park Actually Got

Priory's headline feature is the splash pad, roughly 1,700 to 1,788 square feet depending on which project document you're reading, built for an estimated $800,000 that the Park District pulled from capital improvement funds after four years of planning. The design accommodates children up to eight years old, though the district has said it's open to all ages. There's a 700-square-foot addition to the Priory Center itself, adding indoor program space that didn't exist before.

One detail that doesn't show up in most park descriptions: Priory Park shares its 49-space parking lot with Fenwick High School, which sits directly north and east of the park. The two properties function as one shared recreational and institutional campus, which is worth knowing if you're planning to drive over on a weekend when Fenwick has an event of its own.

During the village's Development Review Board hearing on the project, board members raised the practical question of how the district would manage splash pad access during hours it isn't officially staffed. The answer settled on a mix of expectation and equipment: informal self-policing, plus cameras installed on site.

What's Still Fenced Off This Fall

Keystone Ballfield #2 is the piece that isn't finished. Unlike the other two projects, this one isn't adding a new amenity so much as upgrading an existing field to handle a specific age group better. The infield is being converted from grass and dirt to synthetic turf, sized for Little League U12 play. The dugouts are being expanded by 25 percent to fit older teams as the district's youth leagues grow into bigger rosters, and the bleachers are being repositioned closest to home plate for better sightlines.

The closure runs from August 31 through a planned reopening on November 13, 2026, which puts it well outside the spring and summer season it's built for. That's a fall and early-winter construction window for a field that won't see its first real season of use until next year.

What This Means If You're Walking the Neighborhood This Fall

For the first time since the fencing started going up last September, you can walk to two significantly rebuilt parks in the same afternoon. Constitution's new plaza and volleyball courts and Priory's splash pad and expanded center are both open now, both finished within a day of each other in July, and both worth a second look if the last time you saw them was mid-construction.

Keystone is the one to route around until mid-November. If you've got a Little League player heading into U12 next spring, the timing lines up: the field closes now so it's ready in time for next year's season, rather than losing a summer to construction later.

River Forest is a small village to be running three park capital projects inside the same rough calendar year, and the sequencing meant no single season lost more than one major amenity at a time. If you want the fuller picture of what the village's park system looks like beyond these three projects, Gagliardo Group's guide to River Forest's parks covers the rest of the system, and their roundup of things to do in River Forest is worth a look before your next weekend out. You can also check the River Forest Park District's own project updates directly if you want the construction schedule in real time.

If you're new to the neighborhood, or thinking ahead to what daily life looks like on any given block, our team at Gagliardo Group knows this village down to the ballfield. Search All Homes to see what's currently available in River Forest.