Talks planned over future of Libertyville's shuttered Brainerd building

A summit of sorts is being scheduled to get a better sense of whether saving the shuttered Brainerd building.

“We're getting close to the fish or cut bait time,” village Trustee Rich Moras said.

The to-be-scheduled session was the result of the Brainerd group's request to the village board Tuesday for three more years to make the first lease payment of $250,000 on the properties.

“We think in three years, we will have seen a meaningful improvement in the economy,” explained John Snow, president of the nonprofit group.

Several fundraising events, a pledge campaign and other measures also will raise the public awareness of plan, he added.

Village officials support the conversion of the shuttered buildings and appeared willing to review the lease, but don't want to absorb the first $250,000 lease payment, due July 2, 2011.

The school district owns the former Libertyville High School and adjoining gym at Route 176 and Brainerd Avenue and leases it to the village, which subleases to the Brainerd group. The village's first lease payment is due Dec. 1, 2011, and it must give the school district notice by August if the payment isn't going to be made.

Snow did not receive a direct answer to request for an extension to July 2, 2014. But village trustees agreed the issues need to be explored and details, such as how the renovations would be financed and who would use the facilities, need to be determined.

“It's always been a moving target,” Trustee Drew Cullum said. “We've had a lot of lip service to this but it hasn't amounted to a lot of money.”

The Brainerd group this year has raised about $20,000, some of which has been used for stopgap maintenance issues, such as broken windows. But it doesn't have $50,000 to fix the roof, the most critical maintenance issue, and has had difficulty securing or even applying for grants because it does not own the buildings.

Mayor Terry Weppler said that shouldn't be the case.

“I'd like to see us find a way around that,” he said.

School board President Pat Groody, who was in the audience at Tuesday's village board meeting, said the district is ready to talk.

“We are very supportive of this project and very open to discussion on it,” he said.

Brainerd, central Lake County's first high school, was built in 1917 and the gym added in 1929. Both are on the National Register of Historic Places, but that designation does not protect them from demolition.

In a related presentation Tuesday, architect Mike Kollman, who chairs the village's architectural preservation committee, said the buildings are structurally sound and in a prime location.

He said it would cost the equivalent of more than $4.7 million in energy to demolish the buildings, dispose of the material in landfills and rebuild them.

“Why tear it down and turn it into a parking lot? What sense does that make?” he said.