On September 16, Northbrook Theatre posted sign-up sheets inside its new black box studio for adults auditioning for Neil Simon's comedy "Fools." Four days later, the same room emptied out after the final matinee of "Tale of a Whale," a musical built for children ages 0 to 5. A cast of retirees reading for a play about a cursed village and a cast of preschoolers watching a whale sing both used the same 1,800-square-foot room, inside the same building, days apart.
That overlap did not happen by accident. It is what the Park District built when it spent $12.1 million turning the old Leisure Center, closed for construction since August 2025, into a building where four different age groups now share entrances, hallways, and in some cases the exact same room.
A School Built for One Age, Reopened for Four
The building at 3323 Walters Avenue started as an elementary school in the 1960s and became Park District property in 1986. It spent the next several decades doing what elementary schools and their successors usually do: keeping age groups apart by design, one grade per classroom, one program per time slot.
The renovation, led by Chicago-based construction firm Bulley & Andrews with design by Wight & Company, closed the building for the better part of a year. When the Park District asked residents to help pick a new name, over 500 people responded. At the May 27, 2025 board meeting, 555 votes went to "Northbrook Community Center" against 353 for "Northbrook Recreation and Arts Center," a 61 to 39 percent split. A $2.8 million grant helped cover part of the $12.1 million cost.
The theater reopened first, in mid-May, with "Freaky Friday: A New Musical" running May 15 through 17. The rest of the 40,000-square-foot building followed in June, and the Park District held a formal grand-opening celebration on August 23, with program discounts, demonstrations, and a scavenger hunt that let attendees earn passes to other Park District facilities.
The Rooms Designed to Overlap
The clearest evidence of what changed sits in the floor plan. The renovation added a teaching kitchen, a senior wellness room, an innovation lounge, a knowledge center with a fireplace, four multipurpose rooms, and early childhood classrooms with new viewing windows. One new space in particular does something the old building never asked a single room to do: the activity studio is built to serve preschool gym classes, senior wellness classes, and theater rehearsals, on rotation, in the same square footage.
A Patch report quoted Park District Executive Director Chris Leiner describing the goal as building "a warm and inviting community center that will inspire patrons to gather, socialize and engage" rather than a set of separate program spaces stitched together under one roof. A Patch report quoted Visual and Performing Arts Manager Drew Kambach saying the new dressing rooms and rehearsal spaces mean "our performers and creative teams will thrive in this environment for decades to come."
Where Everyone Went During the Renovation
The renovation's real cost showed up in how far apart the building's usual residents had to scatter while it was closed. Senior Center programs relocated to the Techny Prairie Activity Center and the Village Green Center. General recreation programs for young children and art classes for all ages moved across those same two buildings plus the Sports Center. Northbrook Theatre split in two: the Youth Company performed at Field Middle School in October 2025, while Northbrook Community Theatre staged its December show at the Northbrook Public Library.
During the renovation, the four groups that now share a single activity studio did not share a building, a program calendar, or in the theater's case, even a company. The renovation did not just modernize a 1960s facility. It reassembled four programs that construction had physically separated and then designed the new spaces so they would keep bumping into each other on purpose.
Five Shows, Four Companies, One Room
The fall theater calendar is where that design shows up most visibly. In under four months, the same studio theater hosts:
- Sept. 11 to 20: "Tale of a Whale," staged by Northbrook Theatre for Young Audiences
- Oct. 20 to 25: "Beetlejuice JR," staged by the Youth Company
- Nov. 6 to 8: "Fools," Neil Simon's comedy, staged by the Adult Community Theatre and cast through the Sept. 16 auditions
- Nov. 14 to Dec. 6: "Pete the Cat," back with Young Audiences
- December: "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus," staged by Northbrook Community Theatre to close the year
Four different companies, drawing from four different age brackets, rotating through one room across one season. Before the renovation, that kind of density was possible mostly because programs ran on separate schedules in separate corners of the building. Now it runs on the same calendar, in the same 1,800 square feet, because the building was rebuilt to make that the normal way of operating rather than a scheduling accident.
What the Building Actually Reopened As
By December, the same studio theater will have hosted five productions for four different age groups in under four months, all without anyone needing to leave Walters Avenue. The building's original job, sorting one age group at a time through a school day, is not really what it does anymore. What reopened in its place is a single address where a preschooler's whale musical, a retiree's audition sheet, and a teaching kitchen booked for both a senior cooking class and an early childhood program all occupy the same set of rooms in the same season.
If you're curious what else has changed around Northbrook lately, from new construction to new zoning fights to the small stuff that never makes the portals, the JG Group tracks what's actually happening in the neighborhoods we work in, one story at a time.
