Wheeling landscaping business could get uprooted for new District 21 preschool
Wheeling Township Elementary District 21 may initiate eminent domain proceedings on a landscaping business in order to acquire a swath of properties for a new centralized preschool building.
The district is eyeing five acres on the northeast corner of Hintz Road and Jackson Drive owned by A & B Sanchez Landscaping.
District officials said the property — three single-family homes in addition to company offices and garages — has been for sale for six years. They’ve been in negotiations over a potential sale price with the property owner’s real estate agent for the past two months, but talks have stalled.
After making an initial offer Dec. 13, the district got a response from the seller Jan. 20, and then countered the next day. Officials now say if they don’t hear back by Monday, March 3, they could go to court to initiate condemnation proceedings.
“We have not been able to engage in the kind of negotiation that we feel has been productive,” Superintendent Michael Connolly said.
Reached Monday, an official at the landscaping company referred comment to the business’ owner, who didn’t immediately respond.
The school board’s 4-2 vote late last week to authorize the court action “will allow us to hopefully kick-start those meaningful negotiations,” Connolly said.
The vote came a little more than a month after the board purchased neighboring properties totaling nearly three acres: a one-story house at 2836 E. Hintz Road for $350,000, and two vacant parcels at 2840-44 E. Hintz Road for $540,000.
The A & B Sanchez Landscaping site would be the final piece needed for the new preschool, officials say.
“We do not want to have to use (eminent domain),” said Micheal DeBartolo, the district’s assistant superintendent for finance and operations. “But at this point in order to move the project along, we feel like it’s the next step to get us to the point that we will acquire all the properties.”
District leaders have been contemplating a new early childhood education center for the last three years as enrollment and a waiting list grows, and as its Hawthorne Early Childhood School and Tarkington and Whitman elementary schools — current home to district preschool programming — becomes cramped.
Early plans call for a new school of 25 to 28 classrooms, 13 or 14 student support spaces, 13 or 14 washroom/changing rooms, and a large motor skills room. Cost estimates are in the $30 million to $40 million range.
All school board members said they support the early learning center in concept, but some don’t like the idea of pursuing legal proceedings to meet that end.
Staci Allan said she doesn’t support eminent domain “in almost any form,” and believes there’s a compromise to be had that keeps the parties out of court.
Arlen Gould called it bad “optics.”
But Jessica Riddick, a practicing attorney, said eminent domain “gets a bad rap.”
“This is simply the appropriate legal remedy for this stage of the negotiation,” she said. “Nothing is being done that’s unfair. Nothing is being done that’s in bad faith.”
The district’s preliminary timeline calls for construction on the school to begin in March or April 2026 and be complete in June 2027.