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Schools

D219 Dives Into $14.9 Million Aquatic Center

New Niles North facility will be a vast improvement, but no "Taj Mahal," supporters say. No one at the meeting spoke against the proposal.

The Niles Township High School District 219 school board voted 6-0 Feb. 27 to award contracts for a new aquatics center at in Skokie whose total cost is estimated at $14.9 million.

The decision drew a standing ovation from an audience made up largely of the parents of swimmers and former swimmers at the school.

That cost includes not only the contracts awarded at the meeting, but also budgeted contingencies and architectural and design fees.

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Before the vote, school board President Robert Silverman made the case for the aquatic center.

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“The school at Niles North is approaching 50 years old, and it is the original pool,’ Silverman said. “I was about to say it’s lasted all this time, but I’m not sure it has lasted all this time.”

With a depth of 10 feet, it no longer meets the requirements of the Illinois High School Association, which now requires 12-foot-deep pools. In addition, the roof leaks and it has myriad other issues, he said.

“Sometimes things just wear out,” Silverman said. “People replace their kitchens, people replace their bathrooms in their homes.”

The district can afford the pool – even though it is costing about $1.85 million more than originally projected – because the district has been “squirreling money away” in its capital improvements fund for years, planning to do this project. It will not mean a tax increase because it will come from money on hand and from deferring  some other capital improvements projects, and it will not affect the number of teachers or how much they get paid because the money was collected specifically for capital improvements, he said.

“We are not raising taxes for this,” he said. “It doesn’t affect the OEPP (operating expense per pupil). We cannot use the money for anything else. It’s time to build this pool.”

What’s more, every District 219 student is required to take swimming, so every Niles North student will benefit. It will get heavy use from the Niles North swimming and diving teams, and will be used by area park districts and developmental swim clubs, he said.

John Frendeis, president of the Niles North Athletic Boosters and father of a swimmer who graduated last year, helped plan the new aquatic center.

“It’s a wonderful facility,” he said, “but it’s no Taj Mahal.”

Rather, he said, it is a needed improvement to keep District 219 on par with other area high schools. Frendeis was one of two residents who spoke in favor of the project; no one spoke against it.

The district had been scheduled to award contracts for the facilities earlier this month, but rebid parts of the contract because the original bids were too high. They did go down, but not as much as district officials hoped, said board member Jeffrey Greenspan, chairman of the facilities committee.

However, contracts were awarded for another $2.5 million in capital improvements to be completed this year at the same meeting, and those came in $300,000 below original estimates.

“I’m glad we’re saving money somewhere,” Silverman said.

Work on the aquatic center will begin as soon as possible this spring and should be completed in August 2013, said Christine Oleson of Legat Architects.

 

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