New digs for Discovery Museum?

The tree-lined setting is appropriate and the history interesting, but the building housing the Lake County Forest Preserve District's general office long has been considered inefficient.

So have many other district facilities, with staff and resources scattered throughout the county.

But an action taken Thursday by the facilities committee lays the foundation for consolidating resources in a new location.

The resolution, which will be considered next week by several other committees, outlines a plan to evaluate and possibly demolish various buildings.

Those include a 1920s-era home at 2000 N. Milwaukee Ave., near Libertyville once owned by meat packing magnate David Armour, which has been used as the district office for more than 30 years.

Another is the Discovery Museum and an archives building, which house millions of dollars in artifacts among a complex of former dairy farm buildings at the Lakewood Forest Preserve in Wauconda.

The resolution also authorizes Executive Director Tom Hahn to implement the plan if a central location for office, storage and museum uses can be secured.

Ten buildings are included in the evaluation and removal plan. Besides the general office and museum, they include offices elsewhere, as well as other buildings at Lakewood.

The cost to mothball or demolish the buildings ranges from $32,000 to $120,000. Continuing to operate them would require the repair or replacement of major systems and is becoming prohibitively expensive, according to district officials.

"Long term, they're just not the right uses they were built for," Hahn said.

The district has seriously been evaluating its buildings and structures the last three years to determine which can be saved, recycled or demolished to boost efficiency.

"These are from land acquisitions years and years ago. We just kept everything," said Bonnie Thomson Carter, forest preserve district president.

The district owns about 400 structures, including kiosks, for example. About 200 of the structures are buildings.

It also has been considering options for consolidating offices in a single building and potentially relocating the Discovery Museum to a more central and visible location.