Winter Weather Pushes Back Completion Date on Opus Dei Facility

The winter season's snow and ice has caused some delays in the construction of an Opus Dei institution planned in Darien.

Officials initially anticipated a fall 2010 opening for the Darien Center, located at 7800 S. Cass Ave.

But “winter snuck up a lot earlier than anyone had anticipated, especially the cold weather,” said Darien Director Dan Gombac.

The new target opening for the 20,000 square-foot center, which will provide activities for the human, professional, spiritual, theological and apostolic formation of men and boys, is late spring or early summer.

Because of the frigid temperatures and the recent blizzard that buried the area in snow, work on the project has been halted several times.

“Certain parts of the construction can’t occur,” Gombac said. “In this particular case, it’s literally the brick and mortar going up. The weather conditions have impeded that.”

Officials hope rising temperatures will put the project back on track.

Though Opus Dei is affiliated with the Catholic church, Tim Kelly, who sits on the board for the nonprofit Euclid Foundation, which will own and operate the Darien Center, said the facility will be open to the public.

“People come from all over to participate,” he said. “The idea of Opus Dei is to make people better people. We become closer to God by being better lawyers, doctors and carpenters, or whatever we happen to do in life.”

Opus Dei began its history in Chicago in 1949 when the first members came to the city and began a center on Woodlawn Avenue near the University of Chicago.
Other centers soon opened around the Chicago area, housing both educational programs and the members of Opus Dei who led them.

A house formerly located on the Cass Avenue lot, where Kelly and his sons attended several past Opus Dei activities, was demolished to make way for the new Darien Center.

“We bought the house on Cass Avenue intending to one day turn it into a proper center for activities but everything couldn’t happen all at once,” Kelly said. “We used the house for several years while plans (for the new center) were being made. We always had a great time participating in activities there.”

The expanded facility will replace the Oak Park Study Center in an effort to be more accessible to those in DuPage, Will, Cook and other outlying counties. As demographics have changed, Oak Park is now part of Chicago’s west side and a distance from the western and southern suburbs, Kelly said.

The Darien Center will offer a variety of educational activities for men of all ages, including student clubs, professional seminars, retreats and theology classes, among others, and as in similar centers, will be a residence for the laymen and priests of Opus Dei who organize the activities and foster a family spirit among the participants.

Kelly is excited the project is nearing completion.

“We’re looking forward to it,” he said.

For more information about the project, visit  http://dariencenter.org/.