Antioch approves new location for veterans memorial: ‘This is not final’

A planned memorial to veterans that sparked a controversy over its initial wetlands location was seemingly resolved by the Antioch Village Board on Wednesday.

Board members voted 4-0, with two trustees absent, to approve an alternate site for the project on an existing downtown park plot.

The parcel on the southwest corner of Toft Avenue and Orchard Street has been a park for more than 90 years. It became one of three veterans memorials in the municipality when a World War II tank was placed there. The tank is on loan from the federal government.

Stipulations made by the board at its June 22 meeting included that $15,000 must be raised for soil boring and land-penetrating sonar to assess its construction feasibility. Antioch-based Stateline Environmental Consulting Services completed the required data collection and found no issues with placing the project at the park.

The project has been discussed for a decade with no movement and was forwarded by the Antioch Veterans Memorial Committee in 2023. The Village Board chose the memorial’s site on the William E. Brook Conservancy in April 2025, along the 990 block of Skidmore Avenue.

The committee splintered over the site selection, which initially included members of Antioch VFW Post 4551 and Antioch American Legion Post 748. Design changes placed the memorial, a 150-foot oval-shaped plaza, within 11 feet of Sequoit Creek, a navigable state waterway. Veterans and trustees presented opposition, seeking a more suitable place.

“I am proud to say that I was the lone vote against it at the time; putting a memorial on top of a conservancy memorial is nonsense,” said Ed Macek, a village trustee. “This project is still about a year away from putting shovels in the ground, and if they want to kick the can some more, let’s see what happens.”

Macek also indicated that state Sen. Craig Wilcox, a McHenry Republican, is working on a potential $225,000 grant to help fund the project. McHenry-based HR Green is providing design work on an “in-kind” basis, along with several other technical firms.

The Wednesday meeting was more subdued than those conducted in recent months that included heated exchanges between trustees. Several people addressed the board on behalf of keeping the original site unchanged and not moving it to an alternate location.

“This board approved the location, with the caveat that we decrease the size of the memorial,” said Debra Rentner, the Antioch Veterans Memorial (AVM) Committee’s chairwoman. “We did that; it was approved. We sold the location to donors, spent thousands of dollars on advertising, renderings and designs, not to mention the hours spent fundraising.

“This is an AVM project, and I believe we are owed the opportunity for input … on this project,” she said. “There are other designs; this is not final. Moving the memorial to the tank will cost an additional $100,000, and AVM will not be responsible for this. The grant … the additional funds should not be spent on moving the memorial to the tank site.”

The wetlands site was also seen as part of a larger campus including the new Sequoit Creek Park, the Brook Bandshell, and the relocated City Hall nearby on Skidmore Avenue.

“There is no cost estimate on the designs,” Macek said. “Those still have to be completed.”