The Carol Stream Village Board approved a plan this week that will turn the Kuhn Road fire station into a technology lab and community center run by the College of DuPage.
“This is a wonderful example of cooperation between several different governments,” said Village Trustee Thomas Vinson.
Village trustees agreed to accept from the Fire Protection District the 11,000-square-foot fire station, which sits on almost 2 acres of land on the west side of Kuhn north of Thunderbird Trail.
In exchange, the Fire Protection District will receive from the village a 6-acre parcel of land on the east side of Kuhn north of Klein Creek.
Fire Protection District officials will build a new, larger fire station on the 6-acre site that will allow better response times to the village’s west side, said Fire Chief Mark Bodane.
Trustees also agreed to allow the college to use the 40-year-old fire station building as a campus annex and community center, though details of that arrangement still must be worked out. COD’s main campus is in Glen Ellyn.
Using a proposed $250,000 village grant, college officials will install a computer lab that residents will have free access to. The facility also will have public meeting rooms, classrooms and a center for independent learning. The college also will offer employee-training programs for local businesses, said Vincent Pelletier, the college’s interim vice president for academic affairs.
The center is expected to open no sooner than 2003, said Village Manager Greg Bielawski (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
Fire Protection District officials already have met with residents near the fire station, as well as residents near the proposed station site, and won their approval for the plans, Bodane said. The village could fund the proposed grant with the franchise transfer payment it received from its former cable-TV provider, Time Warner, Bielawski added.
The property swap has been discussed since 1998.
