New Gurnee park celebrated where grade school once flooded
Memories of volunteers scrambling to protect Gurnee Grade School from Des Plaines River flooding still lingered when the property officially started its new life Wednesday.
About 200 spectators gathered to celebrate the grand opening for a Viking Park extension on the old school site on Kilbourne Road. Now controlled by the Gurnee Park District, the land's use for a school dated to 1840.
Rather than a flood-prone school, the property now provides space for sports such as soccer and lacrosse. The Viking Park extension also offers a decorative shelter, rain garden, pathways and a connection point to the Des Plaines River Trail.
Gurnee Elementary District 56 Superintendent John Hutton was among the ceremony's speakers and touched on how satisfying it is to have a park in place of the school. Afterward, he remembered how he was on the job for barely a month when he joined the volunteer sandbagging brigade to save the building from a 2007 flood.
"I didn't know what I was getting into," Hutton said. "You don't know what you don't know. It was kind of surreal. I was thinking I had never done anything like this (sandbagging) before. Then, after we saved the building and everything and we got school started shortly thereafter, I could see what an impact - a negative impact - (flooding) had on the educational experience for those children."
Hutton said he knew Gurnee Grade School couldn't keep operating a stone's throw from the Des Plaines River. He wound up with a captive audience in Gurnee Mayor Kristina Kovarik, who handled her first flood as the village's top elected official in 2007.
In brief remarks to the crowd, Kovarik said the experience immediately convinced her she didn't want the community to repeat the herculean task of protecting Gurnee Grade School from significant flood damage.
"I come out here with (retired Village Administrator) Jim Hayner," Kovarik said. "I said, 'Do we have to do this every time it floods?' He's like, 'Yeah.' And then they ask me to help with the sandbagging. I think I got like halfway through one and I said, 'I'm over this.' We're going to do something different. And that's when I said we're going to get the school out of here."
Gurnee Grade School was leveled in 2013 to make way for the Viking Park extension.
Built in 1954 before flood plains were mapped, Gurnee Grade School was a frequent target of floodwater that resulted in costly student relocations and repairs.
Citing costs of about $300,000 each time students had to be relocated after the school flooded, state, local and federal officials started working toward a permanent fix in 2008. The solution included a $2.4 million flood-protection grant for demolition of the school the Federal Emergency Management Agency awarded in 2011.
District 56 voters played a role in getting the school out of the Des Plaines River flood zone.
Voters in November 2010 gave District 56 an overwhelming ballot-box victory by allowing $28.5 million to be borrowed for construction of administration offices adjacent to Spaulding School in Gurnee and Prairie Trail School in Wadsworth. The money also went toward upgrades at the renamed River Trail School near Gurnee village hall, which had been called O'Plaine School.
In January 2013, roughly 450 pupils in kindergarten through eighth grade at flood-prone Gurnee Grade School shifted to River Trail. About 540 River Trail students, in grades three through five, at the same time moved to Prairie Trail in Wadsworth.
Gurnee Grade School's history and bricks from the building are part of a monument at the park entrance. The park district must use the property as open space and for recreation in perpetuity.