Mundelein High School District 120 voted Tuesday to again put a portion of the Village Green Golf Course up for sale to prospective home builders.
The district only received two bids during last year’s attempt at a sale, and both were ruled improper because they did not follow the terms described in the bid request. One bidder wanted to acquire the whole property while the other proposed more time before the transfer.
Business Manager Andy Searle said the previous bid package required interested companies to close on the property within 60 days of signing an agreement, but the newly approved package allows developers a 120-day feasibility study period and up to 210 days to get zoning approval for their desired projects.
“You’re looking at a yearlong process instead of two months,” Searle told the school board Tuesday.
Located at Midlothian and Winchester roads, District 120 originally bought the golf course for $8.4 million in 2004 when enrollment was on the rise. A management firm has maintained golf course operations ever since.
When District 120 bid the golf course last year it designated a minimum price of $65,000 per acre, or just over $3.3 million for the 51 acres, must be met in order to win the bid.
The board decided in April 2016 to begin the sale process after abandoning plans for a second campus in 2014. Plans that were unveiled last year and recently updated show the district selling 51 acres, with the remaining 38 acres being redeveloped into new athletic fields. The land is expected to be used for new houses.
Superintendent Kevin Myers said prior school boards felt the golf course was an “albatross around their neck” and decided to explore the market in order to better evaluate the district’s options.
“It’s not selling the property, it’s putting it up for sale,” Searle said prior to Tuesday’s vote. “You will still have the option to see what types of bids come in. At that point, you can still reject them all if you wanted to and go back to the drawing board.”
The school board voted 6-1 to proceed.
Thomas Ouimet, who was elected to the school board last year, was the lone opponent. He said Mundelein and other communities in District 120’s boundaries are pushing for growth.
“If we project this whole thing 20 or 30 years down the road after everything gets built, we’re not going to have room for anything, so I’m concerned about giving up property that we already own,” Ouimet said. “I like the idea of keeping that for the future.”
Ouimet said $8.4 million in 2004 money is a bargain compared to a future situation where inflation and a more competitive market would drive up costs.
Referencing a prior gathering during Homecoming festivities, Ouimet said he remembered looking through yearbooks and talking about what the school and community used to look like.
“First thing I thought about was ‘what school board didn’t secure any of the land that was around here?’ I cannot believe that,” Ouimet said. “I don’t want us to be part of that, so I’m very leery of Village Green being sold for housing and the other half (athletic) fields that will cost us $19 million.”
While the school board did vote to put the 51 acres up for bid, the action came with a review of the district’s long-term facilities master plan, which involves potential large scale projects such as a theater addition, media center addition, cafeteria renovation and field house addition, among others.
The $19 million cost for athletic fields Ouimet mentioned is actually a total packaged cost that includes a few other projects. The report shows Village Green redevelopment would be $16.5 million and, if approved, scheduled to start construction in fall 2020 and completed in summer 2022.
Some of the proposed additions in the facilities master plan would displace current classrooms and athletic fields on the main campus. The plan involves building new fields on the golf course property to preemptively replace those lost fields and expand upon what the district already has.
Although there wasn’t much discussion on the golf course sale beyond Ouimet’s comments, School Board Vice President Al Hitzke weighed in.
“I have mixed emotions on giving up this property, but I’d like to at least say we’ve done our due diligence and see what the property is worth,” Hitzke said.
Twitter @Rick_Kambic