Wheaton residents get first peek at Hubble plan
The public got a first look at plans for a grocery store and park district improvements at the old Hubble Middle School site in downtown Wheaton during an information session held Saturday by the Wheaton Park District.
While the developer that owns the property still needs permits and approval from the city of Wheaton and DuPage County, the park district held Saturday's presentation to begin informing neighbors about the plans, park board President Ray Morrill said.
“We want to communicate and keep the lines of communication open so there aren't surprises,” Morrill said. “Some development was going to happen at this site. This (project) is a fantastic option.”
A Mariano's Fresh Market grocery store is slated to come to the site, bringing with it a small office, bank or medical building on the northwest corner of Roosevelt Road and Main Street, a new access road off Main Street north of Roosevelt Road, more parking and underground water storage.
Steve Pagnotta, president and CEO of Bradford Equities, LLC, which owns the property after buying it for just over $5 million from Wheaton Warrenville Unit District 200, said the school and track will be demolished, but two gymnasiums north of the school will remain for park district use.
Bradford and the park district are working on an agreement by which the development company would own land holding the grocery store and the building planned for Roosevelt and Main, while the park district would own the rest of the land, said Michael Benard, the park district's executive director. Much of the land the park district will buy lies in a flood plain and will continue to be used as soccer, lacrosse and football fields.
“Flood plains are only valuable to the park district and whoever wants to put the water there,” Benard said. “It's a nice public use of relatively useless property.”
The park district has $3 million in reserve funds that can go toward purchasing the property without raising taxes, Benard said.
The park district also plans to build a garden for “passive enjoyment of ornamental horticulture,” and a crushed limestone walking path, Bradford said. The fields and indoor gyms will be renovated using another $3 million of reserve funds, he said.
Questions about the plans centered on traffic pattern changes and flooding problems.
Derrick Martin an engineer from V3 Companies of Woodridge who is handling stormwater management for Bradford, said the project may ease some “nuisance flooding” in the flood plain.
“This is one of the few projects where we can say not only are we providing this volume (of water storage), but we are truly reducing the runoff over existing conditions because we have less impervious area in our proposal than what's currently there,” Martin said.
But he made sure to tell neighbors the development won't prevent low-lying homes from flooding.
“The project is not going to make your flooding go away,” Martin said.
Traffic concerns raised about pedestrian safety and motorists using the grocery store's access road to avoid traffic signals will be addressed in a traffic study to be presented to Wheaton City Council at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 13.
“We've completed a traffic study and that will be presented at the public meeting,” Pagnotta said.
He said the company hopes to begin school demolition and construction of the grocery store this summer.