Naperville residents will be surveyed on future of garden plots

Naperville school and park officials soon will be soliciting input on a proposal to relocate some of the city's garden plots to make room for athletic fields.

But they already got an earful at a recent park district meeting.

"That land is really suited to garden plot use," said Elaine Fisher who has been using the plots along West Street for 18 years. "It's also suited to nature study, nature trails, natural type of uses, not for developed uses like sports fields with lighting."

Naperville Unit District 203 has proposed moving some of the garden plots to address a shortage of athletic fields near Naperville Central High School.

The school soon will lose some of its fields to the Naperville Cemetery Association. Although it will gain usable field space by putting synthetic turf in the football stadium, its athletic programs are continuing to grow, according to Superintendent Alan Leis.

"The more teams there are the more places you have to have for those teams," he said. "Those teams do not all have to be in the vicinity of that high school - that's absolutely true - but it seemed to be something we should at least explore and get some community input about."

The park board voted 5-0 Thursday in favor of going through a formal public input process to solicit more feedback.

Discussions about this possibility arose during the past year as city, school and park officials studied whether to reconfigure the 212-acre Caroline Martin Mitchell property that includes both Central and the garden plots.

Under one proposal, about 358 plots would be removed from the northern portion of the current West Street site. Roughly 140 new plots would be created on the south side of that site and another 330 would be created at the DuPage River Park along Royce Road on the south side of the city.

But resident Tom O'Hale said putting athletic fields so close to the school and downtown could cause a dangerous increase in traffic. He suggested moving the fields, not the garden plots.

"When you get something that's been there for so long and serviced so many in the community and when we have a piece of land that speaks back to the time when Naperville was a farming community it's something I don't think we should quickly push away," O'Hale said.

Others said they fear the proposed relocation site could present problems in terms of soil, irrigation, access and animals.

Commissioner Kristen Jungles stressed that if the garden plots are relocated, the alternate site would be as good or better as the current location.

"We certainly as a park district would not want to eliminate a successful program we are offering the community right now," Jungles said. "If anything with all of our programming whether it's garden plots, soccer or anything else we always look for ways to enhance the existing programs."

Tom Stephan, a parent board member for Central's girls lacrosse program, spoke in favor of moving the plots Thursday.

"We feel that the proposal to redeploy and realign the garden plot areas to incorporate practice fields and playing surfaces for Naperville 203 and the Redhawks is not only fair but an effective use of that land," he said.

Commissioner Andrew Schaffner said the park district will need to consider that its constituents are not all part of Naperville Unit District 203. He also said if some plots are moved it could cost about $250,000 just to irrigate the land and he doesn't want the district to bear that expense.

"Residents need to be made whole in terms of if there is a move it's at no expense to the taxpayers of the park district," he said.