Carol Stream in talks to rent offices for temporary village hall
Carol Stream officials will push back the start of an $18 million project to expand village hall while they negotiate a 22-month lease for temporary offices where village employees would work during construction.
Attorneys for the village and the owner of a building along North Avenue are in talks to finalize the agreement. The village hopes to iron out the terms this week and bring the deal to trustees for their approval at a special meeting Jan. 23.
"This is a critical step, and we need to get this resolved very soon," Assistant Village Manager Bob Mellor said Tuesday.
About 165 employees need to move out of their current building at 500 N. Gary Ave. Demolition on a section of the combined village hall and police station was slated to begin in March to make way for a three-level addition, but it likely won't start until later this spring.
If the lease is finalized, village departments would relocate, in phases, to interim offices in the building at 505 E. North Ave, where McDade & Co. ran a retail store in the 1980s.
Village business would occupy about a 30,000-square-feet section that currently houses three tenants.
"We would still need to go in and do some construction in the temporary facility to make it habitable as a municipal center," Mellor said.
Two of the tenants are set to move out of their spaces when their leases expire Feb. 1. The first phase of renovations would reconfigure the interior before some police operations tentatively move into the building in mid- to late February.
The lease for the third tenant is set to expire March 31. Village administrators and employees in community development, engineering and finance departments would plan to move over in April.
The search for a temporary site has been constrained by a limited supply of available office space in Carol Stream. Officials previously considered a vacant industrial building about a mile and a half from the 40,400-square-foot village hall, but that property was tied up in bankruptcy proceedings.
"This is one of the few buildings that was available that has offices currently in it," Mellor said of the property on North Avenue, west of Schmale Road.
Other police department operations - traffic, special operations and investigation units - will move in early March to the Glendale Heights municipal complex at 300 Civic Center Plaza under a lease approved by trustees in both towns.
Carol Stream will pay Glendale Heights a token $10 under the terms of that deal.
The village hopes to keep all the costs associated with the relocation and a temporary facility to about $1 million. About $18 million would pay for designing, building and equipping a village hall that would increase in size to 68,750 square feet. The village plans to use cash reserves to pay for the project without taking loans.
Besides the addition, the project would renovate the rest of the 37-year-old building.