News of the Wild

Maple Lake Stars in Hollywood Film

For some local moviegoers, the biggest star in the Warner Brothers romantic comedy Il Mare, set for release in 2006, will not be Keanu Reeves or Sandra Bullock. Area conservationists in particular will have their eyes trained on Maple Lake.

Last January, Forest Preserve District of Cook County (FPDCC) General Superintendent Steven Bylina called together employees and local conservation groups, including the Illinois Chapter of the Sierra Club, Audubon, The Nature Conservancy, and Palos Restoration Project, to meet with representatives from Warner Brothers.

Studio reps presented their proposal to build a movie set on pylons above the lake, located near Willow Springs at the corner of 95th Street and Wolf Road. Carefully packaged to please conservationists, the proposal included a generous fee for the Forest Preserve District, a reported $100,000.

“Their plan is to put everything back so you would never know it was there,” says Doug Chien of the Illinois Chapter of the Sierra Club. In fact, the FPDCC had already planned for restoration of the Maple Lake shoreline, which is not only trampled by anglers but also plagued by invasive weeds.

The set, which some have called a “glass house,“ was constructed shortly after the meeting and affects approximately 300 feet of the artificial lake’s shoreline. Filming began in early April, and the set was used to film about 20 percent of the movie.

“I felt fairly comfortable with it…because of the minimal impact on the land, and the fact that they plan to return the area to the same if not a better condition than it was in before,” commented Roger Keller, a volunteer steward with the Palos Restoration Project. At the meeting, he proposed that at least some of the filming fee be used to pay for habitat improvements at the site.

The lasting effect of Il Mare, besides a renovated shoreline, may be to get a wider audience excited about the beauty of Chicago Wilderness. As Chien says, “It’s a great opportunity to highlight the natural places in Cook County.”

— Ben LeFort