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Naperville Park District OKs $7.87 million maintenance facility

Work on a $7.87 million project to build a new maintenance facility in Naperville's Knoch Park is scheduled to begin in the middle of next year and be completed before June 2017.

The park district board voted late last week to pursue the project to replace the outdated facility at 724 S. West St. The maintenance facility is one of three in the district.

Park district Executive Director Ray McGury said the existing facility is dilapidated and "there are a lot of things going wrong with it."

Construction will be done by Lamp Incorporated, one of two firms to submit bids for the project.

Plans call for demolishing both the current maintenance facility and the adjacent Barn Recreation Center, which also dates to the 1960s and originally was designed to house park district offices.

McGury said the Barn covers about 15,000 square feet, but only about 4,500 square feet can actually be used for recreational purposes.

Nevertheless, he said the Barn is a district landmark and there will be some "pomp and circumstance" around its demolition.

The timing of the demolition will be based on completion of the district's new Activity Center being built at Fort Hill Drive.

Once that building is ready, McGury said, all activities that take place at the Barn will be transferred to the Activity Center.

The decision to build a new facility stems from a 2009 study that indicated maintaining the existing buildings would cost more than $1 million a year and require additional parking and stormwater storage that would require the district to permanently eliminate 1½ baseball fields at Knoch Park.

Public meetings were held in 2010 and despite the nostalgia for the building it was decided the Barn's days were numbered.

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