Wheaton Park District pursues Hubble pact with developer

Wheaton Park District is expected Wednesday to approve an agreement with a development company to preserve the gymnasiums and ball fields at the former Hubble Middle School site in downtown.

Park officials have been working for about year with Bradford Equities, LLC, on the Chicago-based company's plan to build a Mariano's Fresh Market grocery store on the highly visible property at Roosevelt and Naperville roads. Bradford is seeking permits and approval from the city of Wheaton and DuPage County.

With a presentation about the proposed development scheduled for Monday night's city council meeting, the park district wants to firm up its relationship with Bradford. Park commissioners will meet Wednesday to authorize the contract.

“We finally got all the details worked out,” said Michael Benard, the district's executive director. “It's been a long road and taken a lot of people to get us to where we are, and I just couldn't be happier.”

As part of the agreement, Bradford would own land holding the grocery store and a small office, bank or medical building planned along Main Street. The park district would spend $3 million from its reserves to acquire the rest of the land from Bradford.

While most of the school would be demolished, the park district would get a 49,000-square-foot section of the structure that contains three gymnasiums, a batting cage room and tumbling room.

Much of the land the park district would buy lies in a flood plain and would continue to be used as athletic fields. The fields and indoor gyms would be renovated using another $3 million of reserve funds.

“We've just been very efficient, very good with our dollars and we've been saving for the opportunity to do this sort of thing,” said Benard, adding that the district is slated to get a federal grant for about $2.25 million as a reimbursement for the land purchase.

He called the project “the best of all possible outcomes.”

“This allows us to maintain service to the community to the tune of 100,000 user hours a year of indoor and outdoor athletic activity,” he said. “It's a home run on many levels.”

If Bradford gets the approval it needs, the company hopes to begin demolition of the school in the summer. The target is to build the store in time for a spring 2013 opening.