Batavia rec center question to be finalized Friday

The Batavia park board will decide Friday whether to ask voters' permission to borrow money to build a recreation center at, and revamp, Quarry Beach Park.

The board will vote on the question at 5 p.m. Referendum questions have to be filed with the county clerk by the end of the day Tuesday to get on the November ballot.

At 7 p.m. Thursday, the board will review the latest plan for the recreation center, and determine how much money to ask of taxpayers.

Both meetings are at the Civic Center, 327 W. Wilson St.

The district has surveyed residents throughout this decade, and conducted forums throughout the summer, to get public input. Fifteen potential sites for a recreation center were narrowed to four: the Fox Valley Golf Club on Route 25; on land south of the Evangelical Covenant Church off Millview Drive; Laurelwood Park; and Quarry Beach.

The City of Aurora owns the Fox Valley Golf Club, which is in North Aurora. Mooseheart owns the land south of the church. The park district owns the parks.

Residents and Web site commenters have suggested that the park district build a recreation center on the site of the former Siemens-Furnas factory at McKee Street and Van Nortwick Avenue. The factory closed in January 2006.

But the site's 18 acres are split by McKee. And the factory's large parking lot doesn't belong to Siemens; another landowner leased it to the factory, said Mike Clark, park district executive director. Park district leaders also worried about potential ground contamination from the factory.

The recreation center design calls for an indoor pool and a gymnasium, as well as classrooms. Park district offices could be put there, too. If that were done, the district could sell the Civic Center.

Taxpayers would pay for the building; the district intends to charge user fees to cover the cost of operating it.

As for Quarry Beach, the board will consider replacing the sand-bottom limestone facility with a concrete liner. Clark said the pool loses 250,000 gallons a day through cracks in the limestone; it replaces that water with water from an 850-foot-deep well, which leads to complaints about the pool being cold (the water comes out at 54 degrees). The district believes Quarry Beach needs about a $1 million worth of repair work.