Soil contaminated with asbestos at the former Johns Manville site in Waukegan will not stand in the way of plans to build a multimillion-dollar sports complex in the north suburb, officials said earlier this month.
The 115-acre site will be covered with 3 feet of clean dirt, Waukegan Park District officials said. Because asbestos contamination is minimal, they said, the new layer of dirt would eliminate any public health hazard.
The plan to cover the Greenwood Avenue site came after more than a year of testing by environmental consultants Versar of Lombard and Aeolus of Albany, Calif.
“Frankly, we were pretty surprised at the results of the testing,” Jay Norco, a senior Versar consultant, said. “Even the asbestos at the site shouldn’t be a problem. There are no showstoppers here.”
Norco said analysts expected to find more contamination at the site where Johns Manville made products that contained asbestos for decades before phasing out production in the late 1990s.
The Park District has paid Versar and Aeolus about $200,000 for their analysis so far, which will continue until the project is finished. Additional monitoring is expected afterward, officials said.
Crews finished demolishing nearly 2 million square feet of buildings on the property in October.
Preliminary plans for the sports complex include a soccer stadium with seating for 5,000 and lights for night games, 14 soccer fields, eight junior-size soccer fields, five baseball diamonds and five basketball courts.
There also would be parking for 2,000 cars, a picnic area, concession stands and restrooms. The project is expected to cost $10 million to $13 million, depending on the final configuration, Park District Executive Director Greg Petry said.
Funds will come from cash, bonds and sources such as soliciting donations in exchange for naming a field after a donor, Petry said. The district hopes to open the complex in 2004.
“We plan to put together a catalog of opportunities for people to make donations,” he said. “We’ve done it with some projects in the past, and people have really fought over the opportunities.”
Growing interest in soccer was an important factor in building the sports complex. Soccer leagues in the city field more than 700 teams, and competition for a limited number of fields is fierce, often resulting in games being played in parks intended for other purposes.
“It’s going to alleviate a lot of problems,” said Susan Kearns, treasurer of the Waukegan Soccer Association for Youth. “For one thing, parents will be able to see all of their children playing at the same locale.”
Plans for the complex were endorsed by the Urban Land Institute, which sent a team of experts to Waukegan this year to create a plan to revitalize the city’s 1,500 lakefront acres.
Johns Manville will continue to hold title to the land until the environmental cleanup is complete, said Bruce Ray, an attorney for the company.
