Park Ridge Chamber of Commerce spreads family fun through board games

PARK RIDGE, Ill. (WLS) -- Park Ridge resident John Moran new his family and the larger community needed something to do with their newfound downtime, so he dusted off an old board game created several years ago called "Park Ridge-opoly."

"It's a very simple, traditional board game, you know, roll the dice, move your piece," Moran said. "It's pretty simple and fun for the whole family to play."

The board games had previously been sold, but surplus stock was sitting in storage. As it became clear residents would be staying home for an extended period, Moran - also a member of the local chamber of commerce - got the ball rolling on bringing the board games out of storage.

"I reached out to the chamber of commerce director who reached out to the leadership, they thought it was a great idea to just give these away to the community as a way to kind of support them in their efforts to keep busy here and follow the quarantine rules," he said.

Marko Ratic, president of the Park Ridge Chamber of Commerce board of directors, said the decision to give the games away "was a no brainer for us."

Moran left 100 games on the stairs of City Hall and said they flew off the steps within half an hour.

"People absolutely loved it," he said. "Social media is sort of, was built for this type of thing and people are now sharing their pictures."

Moran hopes the community will be equally as enthusiastic about supporting local businesses.

"Giving back these board games or handing them out for free seemed like a logical way to thank the community in advance for the support that our local businesses were going to need going forward," he said.