District 211 to analyze ideas for Schaumburg site
Having received numerous ideas for the future use of a vacant 60-acre site in Schaumburg, Palatine-Schaumburg High School District 211 officials will spend the next two months fashioning a system of analysis by which to weigh their relative merits.
School board members Thursday agreed to give staff until their March 16 meeting to come up with a way to measure and compare the suggestions included in more than 1,400 responses to a community questionnaire.
The ideas fell into four general categories: Keep the land undeveloped, build a district facility there, sell it to a developer, or lease it.
But within those broad categories were a wide variety of specific proposals ranging from dog park to ice rink.
Board Member Mike Scharringhausen said that because the land was originally acquired for community use - a high school that was never built - it should be retained for some different type of community use.
His preference would be to adapt it to some type of athletic or practice fields, adding that organizations in the area are on the lookout for more.
Board Member Pete Dombrowski said he agreed with Scharringhausen's general preference for a community use, even though he'd received phone calls making such suggestions as affordable housing for seniors.
Dombrowski proposed a committee of potential stakeholders be created to narrow down the public's ideas to three or four to present to the school board.
Board members Anna Klimkowicz, Mucia Burke and Will Hinshaw said they didn't disagree with that, but would first prefer to have a way for either the board or such a committee to analyze all the ideas.
The land is between Summit Drive and Plum Grove Road, near existing subdivisions south of Weathersfield Way and north of Wise Road.
Schaumburg's comprehensive land-use plan has long suggested residential development as the best use of the site.