The Joliet City Council has approved plans to build a minor league baseball stadium and an aquatics complex as part of a $55.3 million economic development program.
The proposals, approved by 7-2 votes, are part of a five-point, five-year package that also includes money to build a library and history museum and increase the annual appropriation for infrastructure repairs.
Joliet will tap its general fund, motor fuel tax fund and its share of riverboat gaming revenues to finance the projects, which should be paid for by 2003, City Manager John Mezera said.
The projects are possible because Joliet will pay off its general-obligation debt in December.
The council also agreed to continue putting riverboat revenues into a reserve fund, anticipating that it will produce a $26 million balance by 2005, Mezera said.
Councilmen Robert Hacker and Tony Uremovic both voted against the stadium and the swimming complex. Uremovic, who chairs the council’s Finance Committee, predicted that the city, by spending money for those five projects, could face a new debt within a few years.
Council members on both sides debated whether building the baseball stadium and the swimming complex would improve the quality of life in Joliet.
“To raise the quality of life, we have to take care of the senior citizens, the people who don’t have the curbs and gutters and streets that most of the people on the West Side do have,” Hacker said.
Councilman Tom Giarrante said that up to 95 percent of the residents who spoke to him about the stadium and the aquatics complex were in favor. He told of a conversation he had with a supporter of both projects.
“He said, `We spent a lot of money on jails, on juvenile detention centers, on bad kids. Maybe it is about time we spend money on good kids.’ I think that is what we’re doing,” Giarrante said.
Other council members indicated that Joliet, whose economy was hard hit by the 1980s recession, needs to continue its comeback.
“We’re in the most exciting time in the history of the city,” said Councilman Joe Shetina, who has served on the council since 1975. “This town has come so far that I can’t even recognize it.”
The council approved spending $23.5 million to build the baseball stadium, with a capacity of 6,500 to 9,000, at a downtown location.
The owners of the Great Lakes League will contribute $1.5 million for a scoreboard and sign a long-term lease.The $10 million outdoor aquatics complex could have a pool, a tubing river, a waterslide and other popular amenities.
