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Downtown Development Lags
District 200 school board members claim that tens of millions of dollars can be generated by selling off public property - Hubble - for private development. Any public asset - the tollways, the lottery, parks, schools - has value if sold for private use. But will the results be as rosy as the district forecasts? Redevelopment on current large scale projects is slowing - the Wescott Crossing project is in default by failing to meet required City of Wheaton deadlines. Today's (May 18, 2007) Daily Herald quotes Wheaton City Manager Don Rose: "The market is cyclical and it'll turn around, but if you haven't got a shovel in the ground and a loan outstanding, I don't know if you'd want to start a similar project right now." Jewel has closed. Gaede's has closed, and there are other vacancies. If we can't fill the space we have now, what happens if we add 10 acres to the mix?
Las Vegas in Wheaton?
District 200 has posted drawings of one redevelopment scheme for the Hubble site on its web site. The very rough drawings show a Las Vegas-style fake lagoon, surrounded by high rise towers. It's unlikely anything resembling this drawing would ever be built; for starters, the high rise towers appear to be roughly twice as tall as what is permitted under Wheaton's zoning laws, so massive zoning changes would be needed, not to mention lots of parking to deal with the congestion this level of density would create.
As is typical, the District seeks to preserve "deniability" by contending that "it has no control" over what is built on the site - even though it is posting this information to try to hype its development plans and, as a practical matter, would have to negotiate specifics given that developers will insist on having approved plans before buying land.
MAP - SEE THE BOARD'S PREFERRED SCHOOL SITE
See it here - a map of the strange layout of the chosen site.
Available on the Download Files page. Is it a gerrymandered congressional district, a challenging dog leg golf hole, or the leftover scraps after cutting out cookies on a baking sheet? You decide. This file is a sketch from the presentation at the June 1, 2006 Hubble Committee meeting. You should view it first to understand the layout.
How is the District doing its negotiating? The Board voted May 24 that this site is the only option. Dr. Catalani reconfirmed on July 12 that the District has "not yet talked about asking price" for the property, and in fact, does not yet even have an appraisal. Dr. Catalani has stated on several occasions that the District wants to complete its due diligence, including environmental testing and appraisals, before talking price. I certainly commend the District for doing its due diligence. However, the Board has already determined that the site is ideal and guaranteed safe without any of the due diligence being completed. When I represented a public body that wanted to acquire land, it negotiated first, and issued the press release once something had been accomplished.
The site totals 18.84 acres (about a quarter acre must be reserved for the City of Warrenville, so it is 18.61 acres net). However, it is in three distinct parts: two 4-acre legs, and a 10 acre rectangle barely connected to the legs by a narrow strip of land. The 4 acre legs would be used for athletic area and some parking; the school itself will be squeezed onto the rectangle and will have to be multi-story (per Dr. Catalani, a MINIMUM of 2 stories, so possibly 3) to fit. The site is adjacent to the site the Board originally wanted (a normally-shaped 11 acre parcel that fronts on Herrick Road). Immediately to the south is the BP Amoco property.
The school parcel itself is almost completely land-locked, accessible only by a narrow causeway running along the southern boundary of the Herrick Road lot. The City of Warrenville requires that the access road be located in this spot. There is no vehicle access to Galusha, so all buses and parents must enter and exit from two-lane Herrick Road (only one way in and out), with another bottleneck at the point where the school parcel touches the other two lots. It appears that parking options adjacent to the school will be limited by space constraints.
There is no direct emergency access to the school (required), so the District intends to negotiate emergency access through the parking lot of an office complex behind the school.
By the way, we never have heard what the District is going to do about Jefferson Pre-School. The District says it needs millions in renovations - when and how will that be funded???? According to the Daily Herald (6/3/06), preschool demand in the suburbs is likely to rise - Hubble is the only school in the District with possible extra capacity that might be converted to this use.
May 27 - Wheaton-Warrenville South Band Car Wash Held At Hubble. Why wasn't this event held in the "southwest part of the District?" Because Hubble is the showcase of the District, in a high visibility location.
THE LATEST ON HUBBLE
NO "FREE" LAND. At the meeting, Dr. Catalani claimed that Warrenville has told the District that the litigation by a neighboring school district against Warrenville "will not be a problem, and he expects Warrenville to chip in $4 million to buy land. All of the numbers the District has circulated assume zero land cost for a new building. However, the District is looking at an 18 acre parcel. It's highly unlikely the price will be $4 million or less. Sunny Ridge, which is only 14 acres, just sold for well over $7 million. Thus, it's likely taxpayers will have to pick up the tab for millions in land costs, even if Warrenville pays $4 million.
HUBBLE COMMITTEE: MISSING IN ACTION? The District has not convened a meeting of the Hubble Committee in over six months. This is NOT the fault of the many people who in good faith have given time to serve on that committee, but shows that the Board really doesn't consider the Hubble Committee to be that important, or it would have sought its input before settling on this parcel. As far as we know, no one from the Board consulted with the Hubble Committee or even told it of this decision. The Board spent less than five minutes approving its motion on May 24, and gave the public no real explanation of why this site is best (it didn't buy it four years ago), or how it made its decision. The Board is also IGNORING the unanimous recommendation of the Hubble Committee at its December 6, 2005 meeting that the Board place a referendum on the ballot "at the earliest possible date" for a new middle school. On May 24, Dr. Catalani stated that the Board would not hold a referendum in 2006 - even though there is plenty of time to do so - but would wait until 2007. If that's true, why is the Board ignoring the unanimous recommendation of its "duly authorized" committee?
DISTRICT ADMITS INFLATING HUBBLE FIGURE BY OVER 70%
At the February 8, 2006 Board meeting, as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request I submitted, our superintendent admitted that the District's earlier claim that it had spent $4.6 million for Hubble repairs in recent years was inaccurate, and that the actual figure was only $2.7 million (in other words, the District overstated its actual spending by over 70%). I commend Dr. Catalani for his candor in promptly correcting this error. Everyone, including this writer, makes mistakes, and owning up to them shows character. However, it is shocking that the District didn't know what its own spending at Hubble was until prompted to review it by a community inquiry. Hubble is the biggest and most closely scrutinized issue the Board has faced in the last several years, and an error of this magnitude calls into question the validity of all of the financial information the Board often cites to justify its plans to move Hubble.
Background: It is obvious to anyone who visits Hubble that the Board has neglected many maintenance issues for up to 25 years. The Board lets the building deteriorate to create the appearance of a crisis to justify its plans to tear down the building, and has failed to perform capital improvement projects. When criticized for neglect of Hubble, the District initially claimed that since 1999 it had spent "in excess of $4 million" or "$4.6 million" at Hubble "over and above" regular maintenance. The "in excess of $4 million" figure appears in the January 25, 2006 Board minutes. The building does not appear to have had this much work done, so I submitted a Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA") request to the District asking for documentation of this spending. This apparently led to a review by the District that discovered that its figures for "maintenance" included non-maintenance items, such as utilities, so that the actual spending was only $2.7 million. This works out to less than $400,000 per year, confirming that the Board has not undertaken any significant capital improvement projects at Hubble in years. I am continuing to investigate these expenditures.
From the District's official highlights of the February 8, 2006 Board meeting:
"Dr. Catalani said it has come to his attention that the reported $4.6 million in maintenance costs for Hubble Middle School over the last six years include energy costs as well as fees for maintenance and capital improvements. Although the energy costs at Hubble are significantly higher than at the other three middle schools, these costs should be subtracted from the total we have spent on maintenance since 1999, bringing the number to $2.7 million."
Note regarding energy costs: remember that Hubble is also significantly larger than the other three middle schools. District figures indicate that on a cost per square foot basis, Hubble's energy costs are comparable to or less than those at the other middle schools, despite the lack of recent renovations at Hubble.
This page last updated May 18, 2007.
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