Indian Prairie chooses new site for Metea

Indian Prairie Unit District 204 has reversed direction and selected a new site for the proposed Metea Valley High School.

The district's Web site is reporting today that administrators are recommending the school be built on 87 acres on the east side of Eola Road, bordered on the north by the Illinois Prairie Path, at the northern end of the district.

The parcel, owned by St. John AME Church and Midwest Generation, would cost $16.5 million.

The district, which covers portions of Naperville, Aurora, Bolingbrook and Plainfield, says it needs a third facility to ease overcrowding at Neuqua Valley and Waubonsie Valley high schools.

The district's Web site says administrators will make their recommendation to the school board on Jan. 22.

The district originally planned to build the school on roughly 80 acres at 75th Street and Commons Drive just off Route 59 in Aurora known as the Brach-Brodie site. Officials backed away from that after a jury set the value of the land at roughly $31 million during condemnation hearings.

Officials said they used the following criteria to select a new site:

• The district needs a third high school and seventh middle school based on current enrollment and space needs.

• The total cost will not exceed the approved referendum, interest, and other identified project revenues of roughly $146,240,000 for purchase of the land and construction of the school.

• The third high school will be comparable to the existing high schools.

• The high school and middle school should open in August 2009.