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Youth baseball, softball will need new home for games after Cary school sale

Once the sale of the vacant Maplewood School in Cary is finalized, district officials will need to relocate buses housed there while a youth baseball group using its ball fields will need to find a new home to practice and play.

The Cary Elementary District 26 school board this week approved the sale of Maplewood School to Central One LLC of Barrington for $2.5 million. The 15.6-acre property at 422 W. Krenz Ave. includes a roughly 42,000-square-foot school building, the district's transportation maintenance garage and bus parking lot, and several baseball and softball fields and playgrounds.

"If we close the deal on the property, we are looking at relocating transportation to some other school property that we own," Superintendent Brian Coleman said Thursday. "We have property that houses Deer Path Elementary School and Cary Junior High. That will most likely be the location (for buses)."

The Cary-Grove Youth Baseball and Softball Association currently uses the Maplewood School ball fields for its practices and games.

"They would have to vacate that property" and utilize other ball fields in the community, Coleman said. "We have some sites at some of our other buildings that they already use."

The group also uses fields at Cary Junior High, Sherwood Field, and Lions Park, all in Cary, and Algonquin Road School in Fox River Grove. A group spokesman could not be reached for comment Thursday on future plans.

Maplewood School closed in 2010 due to declining enrollment and the high cost of maintaining the facility. The district has attempted to sell the building twice before.

"This has been in process for several years so they have been aware that this could be a possibility," Coleman said. "My understanding is the program will continue just at a different location."

The purchase agreement with Central One includes a 90-day feasibility period to inspect the property, conduct tests and examinations, and determine its acceptability for purchase, as well as to get village approval for any proposed development. Central One - a building construction consultant and service company affiliated with Dartmoor Homes - is seeking to build a commercial, multifamily and/or residential development on the property.

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