To stay under budget, Crystal Lake didn’t get everything it hoped for in its downtown Depot Park.

But that is OK with Mayor Haig Haleblian. “This is just the start,” he said Saturday during the park’s ribbon-cutting and grand reopening. “This is the base” and more will likely be added in the future, he said.

“Our goal was to make better use of this space while creating a true sense of place,” Haleblian said to the few hundred people who came out for the ribbon-cutting.

That sense of space includes incorporating terra-cotta pieces and glass blocks that pay homage to ice harvesting on the lake. A new monument sign on the back side of the performance space’s permanent bleachers reads “Crystal Lake - A Nice Place to Live.”

Before construction began in 2025, the park mostly was a grassy field and some trees between Woodstock Street and the Union Pacific North Line tracks, west of Main Street, in downtown Crystal Lake.

“Before, it was just the farmers market” that used the space, said Debbie Barcy. She walked over from her home nearby to see the park and go to the first market of the season.

“It’s beautiful it is so different and relaxing,” Barcy said as she sat on one of the new benches and watched children playing tag on the grass.

Ben Garnmeister looked at the park and its design with a little more of a critical eye. The Crystal Lake resident is a civil engineer who has worked on similar projects for his company.

“It is really well done,” Garnmeister said, noticing things such as the slight tilt of the theater-in-the-round-style, brick and concrete stage. The tilt is for drainage, he said.

He’s lived in the city only 1½ years, so to him it had either been winter or the park had been under construction. Going forward, he could see himself coming back to check out what else will happen in the space.

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Permanent, concrete and wood bleachers are one highlight of the newly updated Depot Park in Crystal Lake, seen on it's grand opening day, Saturday, June 13, 2026. The back of the bleachers includes a new monument with with the city's name. (Janelle Walker)

Originally estimated to cost $5 million, the bids came in at $6.7 million in May 2025. That meant some of the Crystal Lake City Council’s wish list items had to be left out and others scaled back.

Haleblian hopes that as budget funds become available, some of the features that had to be nixed can be added. That included items that had been part of the concept plans: shade sails and pergolas with swings.

“We had to decide what was a priority,” Haleblian said.

Part of the project’s priorities were relocating the Veterans Memorial. Its design was preserved and moved to a more prominent location that can be viewed from Woodstock Street.

New plaques were added to the memorial, honoring residents who died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Their families were invited to be a part of the grand opening event.