South Barrington to expand village hall next year

After several years of discussion and preparation, South Barrington officials are readying to go to bid this winter for an 11,000-square-foot addition to their village hall and police department.

The project, estimated to cost between $2.5 million and $3 million, would bring the current building at 30 S. Barrington Road to about 18,000 square feet. Work is expected to begin next year.

Though the existing facility has served the village well for decades, the time for expansion is now, Village President Frank Munao said.

“All of our services have increased,” he said. “The police department is larger than it was before.”

One of the most significant changes involves moving the police department to the building's lower level, which now holds the village board's meeting room. That space will be converted to a police training room and temporary headquarters for emergency operations.

The police department's prisoner holding room also will be improved, but the current policy of moving prisoners to a different off-site facility for overnight incarceration probably won't change, Munao said.

Village hall and police staff are expected to remain in their current offices while the addition is being built, but there will likely come a time when village meetings will need to be held off-site, Munao said. The village will likely ask permission of Willow Creek Community Church to use some of its meeting space.

The project won't require any more land acquisition or a tax-hike referendum, Munao said.

The expansion is expected to meet the needs of the village administration and police department for the foreseeable future, but there is a chance that public works will need more storage space at some point, Munao said. The additional storage would probably also be housed on the same property, but in a separate building.

It's unclear whether the village hall project can be built entirely in 2011 or if the work would spill over into the beginning of 2012. Much depends on how early next year the weather will permit the start of construction, Munao said.

One of the final steps of preparation has been ensuring that the project meets new standards of stormwater management.