After six decades, will St. Viator football finally have a home-field advantage?
The Chicago Bears aren't the only ones who want to build a football stadium in Arlington Heights.
St. Viator High School has proposed construction of a stadium as part of a four-field outdoor athletic complex that would allow the school to host varsity football games on its campus for the first time in its 61-year history.
Development of St. Viator's backyard space - located south of the school building along Dryden Avenue - is the marquee piece of a $28 million capital campaign that also calls for building renovations and a surge in endowment funding to help the Catholic school remain competitive in recruiting students and faculty.
"We do not envision this to be easy or quick. Goals of this size require tremendous amounts of planning, private funding and public support," the Rev. Dan Lydon, the school's president, told neighbors during a community open house Wednesday night. "Which is why we are here tonight - to share, to gather input, to be transparent, and most of all, to be good neighbors to you."
Conceptual designs on large poster boards at the meeting place the competition field along Dryden, a spot sufficient to host football for boys, and soccer and lacrosse for boys and girls. A neighboring practice field is to the east, while boys baseball and girls softball fields are to the south.
The southeast corner of the site would house a small building for batting cages and indoor track and field events.
The preliminary plans call for all four fields to have artificial turf, and four lighting towers per field for night games.
Athletic Director Jason Kuffel said a seating capacity for the football stadium hasn't been determined, but the intention is to have home bleachers that would be "long and short" as opposed to the taller bleachers where home games are now held at the Forest View Educational Center in Arlington Heights.
St. Viator pays Northwest Suburban High School District 214 a yearly rental fee for use of the Forest View field, where the Lions have been playing for at least the last 30 years.
Lydon said there were plans for an on-campus football stadium in the early 1960s that never came to fruition.
The new bleachers would be part of a structure that also houses restrooms and a press box.
Visiting-team fans would sit on the other side of the field in portable bleachers next to Dryden, officials said.
The entire outdoor athletic complex would be fenced in, and fans would enter the site from the existing parking lot south of the school.
The adjacent baseball and softball diamonds also would have permanent bleachers of about 200 seats each, dugouts and a nearby concession stand.
Nick Papanicholas, a member of the St. Viator board of trustees' building and grounds committee, said the plan would require some village approvals, but he doesn't anticipate it needing major zoning variations related to parking, lighting and other issues.
"Our plan is to conform, not ask for relief," said Papanicholas, a 1997 Viator graduate who is president of Nicholas & Associates, a Mount Prospect-based construction management firm that specializes in school construction projects.
The school will submit its initial plans to the village ahead of a meeting with the conceptual plan review committee in two weeks. After tweaks and further refinement, the plan would go to the full plan commission and then village board - a process that could occur between January and May 2023.
But school leaders cautioned the athletic complex - expected to cost $12 million to $15 million alone - could be another three to five years away, depending on donations received.
First on the priority list over the next two to four years is a $6.5 million plan for school building improvements, including heating and cooling system work, LED lighting, modern furniture, and better acoustics. That's followed by a $2.5 million goal to build the endowment.