HAMMOND | A Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired amphitheater is in the works for Wolf Lake Memorial Park.

Port Authority Director Milan Kruszynski unveiled preliminary designs for the amphitheater earlier this week. The overall plan is to complement the recently completed Lost Marsh clubhouse, visible from the site.

The preliminary designs call for a 5,600-square-foot building clad in Indiana limestone and brick that would include a green room for performers, restroom facilities and a storage area. The designs feature two stages. The larger stage faces southeast with crushed stone seating for several hundred and a large sloped grassy area for large crowds. The smaller stage faces northwest and has limited seating available.

Above the stage is a pitched roof with glass and exposed steel. Shooting from that roof are distinctive twin 65-foot-tall towers made of brick, steel and glass that Kruszynski said are modeled after a series of towers Wright designed in 1895 for the Illinois side of Wolf Lake.

The amphitheater is part of a much larger $31 million plan, funded by the Regional Development Authority, to revamp the park and the surrounding area. In order to accomplish the tentative design, Port Authority Chairman Tom Kuhn said some land will have to be acquired and streets re-routed.

"The idea is to change Sheffield Avenue and have it end at 129th Street," Kuhn said.

At that point, Sheffield Avenue would become an entry road to the park.

One of the most recent additions to the park, an electricity-generating wind turbine at the corner of Calumet and Sheffield avenues, also is expanding, with the addition of an educational kiosk near its base. Port Authority Construction Committee member Bill Hutton said preliminary designs for the $10,000 project call for an interactive display, allowing children and other visitors to the park to create their own electricity with a hand-powered crank.