Mt. Prospect expanding Community Connections Center

Mount Prospect’s Community Connections Center, which opened in August 2009, will be expanding.

This week, the village board approved a three-year lease that will allow the center at 1709-1711 Algonquin Road to grow from its existing 2,400 square feet by an additional 1,200 square feet.

That is because of a vacancy that became available in the Crystal Court Shopping Center, where the center is located.

The center is a collaboration between a number of service providers, including the Mount Prospect Public Library, which shares in the funding with the village. The annual lease costs to the CCC partners will be $65,524. Two trustees voted against the lease, citing the cost of expansion in comparison to other cuts the village has made in programs and personnel.

The services at the center include lending materials in various formats and languages, Internet access, literacy services for children and teens, continuing education and literacy programs for adults, after-school tutoring and homework services, police outreach, health assessments and screenings, crisis intervention and counseling, emergency financial assistance and a food pantry.

The additional space will enable the library to expand its services, and will provide the center with a larger space for meetings and classes. The village’s portion of the build-out expenses will be paid for through a state grant.

Since it started, the center has been very successful and highly utilized, village Manager Michael Janonis told the village board.

“We were able to negotiate a lease that was pretty much in line with the lease that we were coming off of,” he said, noting that the cost per square foot was close to what it was in the past.

“It is used all the time,” said Mount Prospect Mayor Irvana Wilks, who noted as well that the space is tight. “The thing that does strike you is how much is crowded into a small area.”

“It’s probably one of our success stories here,” said Trustee Arlene Juracek. “I have been there for anniversary celebrations and other things at the center, and you can just see that the library is jam packed, with kids using computers.”

“Really what is desperately needed is space,” Janonis said. “The partners want to be able to add more programming.”

Janonis said the village would pick up two-thirds of the cost, with the library sharing one-third, not counting partner contributions.

Although the board saw the need for the center, the vote on the lease was close, with Trustee Steven Polit and Trustee John Matuszak voting against the measure.

Matuszak questioned the timing of the expense, given the village’s recent cost cutting to such programs as Officer Friendly.

Polit added, “Right now we have to be concerned … we laid off police officers and fire officers.”

He also said, “I do understand the constraint of the space, because when three, four, five, six hundred pounds of food go down there on a Monday morning, they are constrained by all this food being in the hallways until they are disseminated by four o clock in the afternoon.

“But at the same time I know we discussed about, as soon as possible, bringing on some of the folks that we left out in a lurch in the budget time with the police and the fire, and I just think it is a necessary part of the process to really question any new money we spend.”

Trustee Paul Hoefert said, “We’re a multicultural community, and the Community Connections Center provides some very important services to various segments of our community, especially on the southern end.

“To me, this center provides this area and this segment of the community inclusion.”

Trustee Arlene Juracek said the cost to the village — $14,000 — “is not going to fund Officer Friendly or an additional firefighter. But what it’s going to allow us to do is to have space to more efficiently deliver our services.”

She added, “We need a South outpost. We are a long village, if you go from the south end up to the north end. There are mobility issues, transportation issues, either for our residents to access the service here at village hall or for Human Services and the police department, etc., to go out there to the north and south ends of the village every time there is a call.”