Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Park & Family Entertainment Center
Park Description
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Park & Family Entertainment Center offers families a place to spend quality time together and brings traditional and affordable recreation back to the neighborhoods for residents to enjoy.
Opened to the public in January 2003, the MLK Family Entertainment Center is an unprecedented all inclusive roller rink, bowling alley, eatery and special event facility. This marks the park’s second major project committed to the revitalization of the Auburn Gresham community following the development of Renaissance Park, 79th and Ada.
The main features of the 40,000 square foot facility are an 80-feet wide by 160-feet long roller rink and a 12-lane bowling alley. Other amenities include a snack bar that offers a variety of foods, including pizza made on the site; a children’s birthday party area that accommodates up to 200 for birthday parties and other special events, and an arcade packed with 20 video and ticket games and prize booth allows winners to redeem game tickets for souvenirs. The masonry building is air- conditioned.
The roller rink boasts a hardwood maple floor surface that has two sheets of plywood and is topped with three coats of polyurethane to make a seamless ride. There are guard walls, mirrored disco lights, built in fog machine, and a disc jockey booth with state-of-the-art stereo equipment.
To keep accurate score, the bowling alley has an automatic computer scoring. To teach bowling, the lanes also have automatic bumper lanes that block gutter balls.
History
The Chicago Park District acquired this one-time neighborhood baseball field from the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago in 1969. Hawthorne Park now provides a wider variety of recreational facilities: basketball courts, two playgrounds, a spray pool, and a sandbox. The park gained its name in 1973, when a number of park sites were named for trees and plants. The term hawthorn takes in a large group of small trees and course shrubs found throughout the temperate sections of North America. Hawthorns are hardy, and can adapt quickly to adverse conditions. They bear edible fruit similar to an apple. Birds and rodents dine on this fruit; deer eat the twigs and leaves. Hawthorn thickets also provide a home for birds and small mammals. Today, the hawthorn tree is generally spelled without an "e" however, historically, the name was often spelled that way.