Sugar Grove buys 2 buildings for village offices
The Sugar Grove Police Department will get more room when the administrative and finance offices move out of the village hall at 10 S. Municipal Drive into a building down the street.
The village closed in early June on the purchase of two office buildings, for $1 million, and three vacant lots, at 130-170 S. Municipal.
"It's hard to pass up the opportunity," President Sean Michels said this week. The village board authorized the purchase April 1.
The office park, which was planned to have five buildings, had been foreclosed on, he said.
"By doing this we will be able to put off building a larger building for some time," Michels said.
The village will first renovate and rent out one of the buildings as a small-business incubator, he said.
By the end of the year, or early next year, village offices will move in to the other building.
The village board room will likely stay in the current building, Michels said.
The buildings at 140 and 160 S. Municipal were built in 2008.
In 2006, Sugar Grove drew up plans to build a new, $20 million police station. It planned to borrow up to $8.5 million to get the work started, and also increased impact fees on land development. The village had been on a house-building tear for several years, at one point issuing 377 new-housing construction permits a year. It obtained land kitty-corner to village hall for the station, in a swap with a commercial developer for land elsewhere in the village.
It abandoned that idea in 2007 when the real estate market was crashing.
The money for the new buildings came from the impact fees, Michels said.
The new buildings were part of a planned five-building office complex. The other three buildings were never constructed, and part of the interiors of the two buildings are unfinished.
In the current police station, a prisoner-holding area doubles as a storage room, the squad-car garage was converted to offices, and there are no interview rooms. Suspects and witnesses are questioned in the village board room.