Glendale Heights Sports Hub to get makeover
Having a spring sporting event canceled by rain in DuPage County doesn't raise too many eyebrows.
Unless, of course, the sport is indoor soccer.
Which is one reason why Glendale Heights is preparing to embark on an estimated $8 million project to renovate its Sports Hub - including the leaky roof - and build a small addition to the Aquatic Center housed at that facility.
"The roof is bad all over," Assistant Village Administrator Roger Mabbitt said. "It leaks and it's dangerous when you get standing water."
The combination of a leaky roof and wet indoor fields forced game cancellations during indoor soccer season. Combine that with a gymnasium that lacks air conditioning and officials say it's time to spruce up the facility.
The project is still in its conceptual stages and a committee has been working the past three months to identify pressing needs at the 11.2-acre campus. The proposal calls for installing air conditioning in the gymnasiums to improve air circulation and modernizing plumbing throughout the facility.
Throughout its more than 30-year existence, the Sports Hub has gone through several modifications. The original Olympic-sized pool was lifted in the 1980s in favor of the aquatic center and field house. The gyms were added at the same time.
The latest renovations, if all goes as planned, will take the aquatic center one step further and give it more of a water park atmosphere with an eye on attracting teenagers and young adults for a more family oriented destination, said Cec Sullivan, director of parks, recreation and facilities.
"We're trying to develop the Sports Hub into something that takes us into the future," she said. "We have a lot of maintenance issues. We have to modernize."
Sullivan, a 27-year employee of the village, said the committee hopes to have a master plan in front of the village board in the near future. Only at that point can cost estimates be completely accurate, she said.
The Sports Hub sits in the Civic Center Plaza, just west of the village's government center on the northeast corner of Fullerton Avenue and Bloomingdale Road. Its renovation will go hand-in-hand with new construction of a senior center and a police department on the Civic Center campus.
As for deficiencies in the construction of the Sports Hub, Sullivan said it's not a matter of finding blame; it's a matter of updating the facility.
"It just is what it is and whatever was good at the moment just isn't functioning for us right now," she said.