Food’s on at Tinley Park’s 80th Avenue train station
Local 1 Station, a combination restaurant and special events catering venue that opened last month at the 80th Avenue Metra station in Tinley Park, is an extension of the rebranded food and beverage service at the Even Hotel at the Tinley Park Convention Center.
“We parlayed what we do at the convention center into one brand umbrella,” said Daniel Fitzgerald, managing director of Local 1 Station and Local 1 at the hotel.
The Tinley Park Village Board voted May 18 to make the Harp Group, a Westmont-based hospitality and mixed-use properties investment firm that owns the Even Hotel and the Local 1 brand, vendor for the 80th Avenue station.
The plan was for the vendor to serve breakfast and lunch, but Fitzgerald said operating hours are only 5-10 a.m. until commuter traffic fully returns.
“We will, however, be doing private events any day and any time of the week,” Fitzgerald said.
Harp Group founder Peter Dumon said Local 1 Station is designed to be an accessible and reasonably priced place that patrons can visit after football games and big events.
“The goal is to create a relevant entity within a community that residents can enjoy,” Fitzgerald said. “We really want to create that relevance and local tie. This is their spot.”
But evening events are down the road, depending on how business does as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.
The restaurant offers traditional American diner staples and homestyle farm-to-table dishes on the Illinois Central Diner, the name given to the breakfast and lunch menu. For commuters, the Express To LaSalle Street Station Menu offers grab and go items for the mornings, including Starbucks coffee.
Local 1 also plans year-round weekend themed events at the train
station, such as High Tea, Mother’s Day Brunch, Paint & Sip Night and Garden Terrarium Night, at 1 p.m. Saturdays throughout the year.
Fitzgerald credited the return of executive chef Denis Ehmig in enabling replicating at the train station what Local 1 has at the Even Hotel.
Denis, an Oak Lawn resident who was born on Chicago’s Southwest
Side, was the executive sous chef at the Tinley Park Convention Center from 2012 until 2016. He is a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu Chicago, and has led the kitchens of the JW Marriott in downtown Chicago, McCormick Place, the Wintrust Arena and the Marriott Midway Airport Hotel, where he led a full restaurant rebranding and hotel renovation.
Both the train station and the Even Hotel will feature barbecue prepared by Denis, using the new indoor and outdoor smokers. Harp Group estimates the train station should generate $250,000 in catering sales alone in its first year, depending on the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Harp Group pays the village a monthly licensing fee of $1,500 and a percentage of revenues for use of the train station, said Priscilla Cordero, Tinley Park business development manager.
The 80th Avenue station is on the fifth highest ridership line and the eighth busiest outlying station in the Metra system, according to the commuter rail line’s 2020 report.
The train station became available last summer following the closing of Parmesan’s Station restaurant.