Neighbors complained to the Joliet City Council this week about a disc golf project underway on undeveloped land near the Old Joliet Prison.

City officials said the problems cited at the council meeting Tuesday were unrelated to the disc golf project.

But the neighbors said they wanted to know more about what’s happening on the land behind their houses.

Yvette Stevenson said she has pictures of people dumping on the site. Others said there has been burning going on.

“There’s something new there every single day, and it’s getting closer and closer and closer to our properties,” Stevenson told the council.

A disc golf project is underway on undeveloped land that is part of the Joliet Correctional Center owned by the state of Illinois.

Joliet manages the property with a lease that was used to clean up the old Joliet Correctional Center and convert it into the Old Joliet Prison, which has been opened for tours and events. The state property includes a large stretch of undeveloped land on the east side of Collins Street that has been proposed for various uses, including the disc golf course.

Mark Grabavoy in 2019 presented a proposal to the Joliet City Council Prison Committee to create an 18-hole disc golf course that he said could attract 20,000 people a year.

Quinn Adamowski, board president at the Joliet Area Historical Museum, which manages the prison site, told the council that the disc golf people have “spent thousands of hours” trying to convert the site into an attraction.

“This is not someone out there trying to decimate the site,” Adamowski said.

Neighbors, however, said they have been left in the dark.

“I’ve been lied to, and nobody has had the decency to come out to us and the neighbors and talk to us,” said Alma Montero, although she then added that the city’s economic development director did come to the area to check out the situation.

“This is literally in their backyard,” said Tanya Arias, president of the Collins Street Neighborhood Council.

Arias said at one point there was “a live fire burning in that area with a bunch of empty gas tanks lying around.”

City Manager James Capparelli said the problems identified by the neighbors appear to be separate from the efforts to create the disc golf course.

“There have been reports of illegal dumping – asphalt, concrete,” Capparelli said. “That’s clearly not the people working on the golf course.”

Assistant City Attorney Chris Regis said the dumping “underlies the need for occupancy and redevelopment” of the site.