Batavia officials see plans for new downtown development

How about going for a swim in downtown Batavia (and not in the river)? Then walking right next door for a breakfast at a brand-new McDonald's?

A 70,000-square-foot recreation center for the Batavia Park District would anchor the northern half of a redevelopment in downtown Batavia, under a plan presented to the city Tuesday night.

Preferred Development Inc. showed drawings of what it would like to do to about two acres on the northwest corner of Island Avenue and Wilson Street, to the city council's community development committee.

The plan calls for tearing down the one-story shopping-and-office-center on the building, as well as the McDonald's to the west of it. PDI has offered to buy the shopping center.

PDI and McDonald's could trade some land, so that the new McDonald's would be built right at the corner of Island and Wilson.

The rest of the site would contain a parking lot, and a three-story parking garage with storefronts on the first floor.

The proposed rec center would front onto Houston Street. The four-lane lap pool would be on the first floor in the northeast corner of the building, sitting where the vacant Chapala's restaurant now is.

The plans presented were preliminary. PDI initially intended to just buy the shopping center and keep it.

"We have driven past the site many, many times and wondered why it was what we in real estate consider underutilized," said PDI President Evan Orliff. Then it started meeting with city officials, who knew that the park district was interested in developing a rec center downtown and put the two in touch.

The rec center could generate 1,000 trips downtown each day, Orliff said. That would increase exposure for downtown businesses.

"This project can put more footsteps through downtown than just about anything else," said assistant city administrator Randy Recklaus.

Park board president Pat Callahan said PDI approached the district around Christmastime.

"We did not seek this opportunity out. It came to us," he said. He noted voters overwhelmingly rejected a plan in 2008 to build a rec center as part of redoing Harold Hall Quarry Beach and Beach Park. Out of that, the board took three lessons: Residents didn't want their taxes raised, they wanted the Quarry left alone, and the park district had to find another way to provide some of the programming residents want that it doesn't have now.

"Our goal is to keep Batavians here" instead of traveling to Geneva, West Chicago or Aurora recreational facilities, he said.

But he acknowledged the complexity of the deal being talked about, involving two private properties and two public entities.

"I'm petrified by this opportunity,"

The district could pay for the rec center without having to ask voters for approval by using the bonding authority given to it by state law when the property tax cap was approved in the late 1980s. Governments are allowed to borrow, without a referendum, an amount equal to what they levied for bond and interest payments the year the tax cap took effect. The district levies a tax of about $600,000 for that.

Most likely, the district would purchase the land on an installment contract, according to Mike Clark, the district's executive director. It could use Build America federal stimulus bonds, which he said offer a rebate to the issuer on part of the interest.

With the blessing the committee informally gave, the developer will refine its plans. No schedule has been set for any official action.