Residents will have a chance to see the expanded Tinley Park Convention Center at Discover Tinley Saturday. (Ashley Rueff/Tribune)
The main attraction at Discover Tinley Saturday will actually be the new walls, floor and ceiling of the Tinley Park Convention Center as organizers use the community event as an opportunity to show off its new 58,000-square-feet of space.
The entire expansion project won’t be complete until early June, but the exhibit space is ready and has been in use since mid-February, said Daniel Fitzgerald, sales and marketing director for the convention center.
A grand opening is scheduled for July after the rest of the renovations are finished, but before then the village, which funded the approximately $21 million expansion, is taking this weekend as a chance to show off the new space to its residents.
“I think people are curious to see it because, unless you go to a meeting there, you many never get a chance,” said Reta Brudd, chair of the village’s Community Resources Commission in charge of Discover Tinley. “The new facility is just remarkable.”
More than 150 booths will be manned by area businesses and organizations and another 30 will be set up by the village in the expanded exhibit space Saturday.
Last year, the event was crowded because some of the normal space was taken up for the remodeling, but now that the interior is finished Brudd said they are spreading out to take advantage of all 58,000-square-feet in the largest exhibit space.
In addition to the booths and an entertainment stage, there will also be a fire truck inside the building with its ladder extended to demonstrate the size of the space. There will also be an inflatable moonwalk for kids along with the annual face painting, balloon animals and other kids activities.
Discovery Tinley has been around since 1978 when organizers used it as a way to keep up with the town’s population boom in the ‘70s, Brudd said. With the influx of new residents, Discovery Tinley was created to help them learn about area businesses and organizations.
The tradition has continued and on Saturday visitors can learn everything they may need to know about Tinley Park.
“There’s everything from churches to dentists to restaurants to insurance people,” Brudd said. “Everything you want to know about the community you live in you can find out there.”
This year the event will also double as a showcase of the new convention center for exhibitors who may be interested in reserving space for their next event.
“You never know who might be a potential end-user of this facility,” said Amy Chmura, special events coordinator for the village. “We really want to use it as an opportunity to showcase all the things that we have so people know we are a vital and growing community.”
Fitzgerald said so far potential exhibitors have been very interested in the expansion.
“Once we get them in, the space has been selling itself,” he said.
Discover Tinley is a free event and will be 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. The vendors will include restaurants with free food tastings, samples and prize giveaways. White Sox mascot Southpaw will also be around from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
Entertainment will be provided by local groups including the Grissom Middle School Choir, Tinley Park Bobcat Cheerleaders, Orland Park Glee, TNT Dance and Zumba dancing by Pierson Fitness.
The village is also hosting yoga, dance and karate demonstrations, police seminars on Internet safety and identity theft protection, a demonstration with Tinley Park’s Police Department’s K-9 unit dog, Thor, and, dog obedience training by PAWS.
