Itasca moves Haymarket hearing to Lake Park High School in Roselle
After two delays, Itasca officials announced Friday they have secured a large enough venue to hold a public hearing on a plan to open an addiction treatment center in town.
Just two days ago, Mayor Jeff Pruyn said the village was canceling a scheduled plan commission hearing for a second time because officials couldn't find a space to hold the expected crowd.
But in a letter to residents Friday, Pruyn said the hearing will move outside Itasca to Lake Park High School's west campus in neighboring Roselle on Oct. 16.
Plan commissioners are set to hear a presentation from Haymarket Center on its bid to convert the Holiday Inn on Irving Park Road into a treatment facility for patients with substance abuse disorders.
"The meeting will be held in the school gymnasium, which will provide ample space for all those who want to attend," Pruyn wrote. "All previously scheduled meetings at Peacock Middle School have been canceled."
Village and Lake Park High School District 108 officials are meeting Monday to discuss what fees the village will pay for use of the space.
The village originally planned to hold its first hearing on the Haymarket plan on Sept. 18 at the middle school - the largest public space in Itasca - but had to cancel it before it even began when more than 1,350 people jammed the gymnasium and cafeteria, and hundreds of others couldn't get inside. The crowd represented about 18% of the village's population of 8,700.
Haymarket leaders have told village attorneys they'll take at least two meetings, each three hours, to present their proposal, Pruyn said during his State of the Village address this week.
"So we're looking at quite possibly half a dozen meetings or more before the plan commission even takes a vote on this," he said.
The village is working to secure additional dates at Lake Park High School, Pruyn wrote in his letter.
"I want to extend our sincere gratitude to the Lake Park Community High School District 108 administration and the village of Roselle for working with us on this solution," he wrote.
Founded nearly 45 ago, Haymarket, a nonprofit treatment provider headquartered in Chicago, is making its second attempt at opening a recovery center in DuPage County. Almost 100 people died from drug overdoses last year in the county, and nearly 2,000 residents from DuPage and other collar counties were patients at Haymarket clinics from 2017 to 2018.
"We chose Itasca because the building we looked at was a perfect turnkey fit for us to hit the ground running on the impact of not just the opioid epidemic, but how DuPage will aggressively treat all substance use disorders and mental health disorders in the county," Haymarket President and CEO Dan Lustig said during a county board meeting this week.
Lustig also told county board members Haymarket has "retained a private ambulance service who does and will provide not only basic life and safety, but advance life and safety."
But Haymarket's request has met staunch opposition from a large segment of village residents who say the proposed 200-bed facility is too big for Itasca, would overwhelm ambulance and other municipal services and would cost the village thousands of dollars in tax money from replacing the hotel with a tax-exempt organization.