Built as Wheaton Community High School in 1925, the enormous building housing Hubble Middle School at the corner of Main Street and Roosevelt Road in Wheaton may be on borrowed time as a school.
The Wheaton Warrenville Unit District 200 Board is expected to vote Wednesday to buy 14 acres near Herrick Road and Galusha Avenue in Warrenville for a new middle school that would replace Hubble.
But a host of potential snags remain, including funding for construction of the school and access to the largely landlocked site. And board members are divided over what to do with the 21-acre Hubble property if it is no longer used as a middle school.
Hubble’s fate is complicated by its being a considerable distance from many of its students, including all middle school-age children living in Warrenville. In addition, district officials disclosed last year that the 253,000-square-foot building would require $34 million in renovations to bring it up to snuff. That would be more expensive than a new middle school on a new site or Hubble’s site.
Some district history is involved too. Warrenville hasn’t had a middle school since the district closed Bower Middle School decades ago and converted it into an elementary school. Many in Warrenville feel their city deserves a middle school.
Until 1992, the Hubble building served as Wheaton Central High School. Some residents of Warrenville and south Wheaton feel that Hubble could be converted back into a high school.
That possibility has been discussed repeatedly in recent years, as district officials have revisited returning to the days of three high schools, which Wheaton and Warrenville had from 1973 to 1983.
The 14-acre Warrenville site, which would be large enough to hold the proposed 144,000-square-foot, $26-million middle school, would cost from $1.6 million to $2 million, district officials said.
But Warrenville officials will not allow access to the site from a strip of land that extends north to Galusha Avenue. For the site to work as a school, the district would need driveway access from BP Amoco, which owns a vacant 30-acre site to the south, or from a landowner with a vacant 15-acre site to the east. The district rejected that property last year as a possible middle school site because of its high asking price.
How a new school would be funded also remains uncertain.
District officials acknowledged that a referendum question increasing taxes–possibly one tied to the anticipated $54 million to $58 million referendum question that the district is considering for next year to fund expansions to its two high schools–would be the likeliest method.
Additional funds could come from Warrenville’s Cantera tax increment financing district, officials said, or from selling the Hubble site, which could fetch from $4 million to $10 million. But most board members seemed inclined to preserve at least part of the Hubble property for existing district programs and other uses.
District Supt. Gary Catalani has suggested selling the Hubble site, having Wheaton set up a TIF to help fund the Hubble property’s commercial redevelopment and then using funds generated from that TIF to pay for a new middle school.
But Wheaton Councilman Mike Gresk predicted the City Council would reject any redevelopment project in which Wheaton TIF funds fund a building in Warrenville.
School board president Andy Johnson, a Warrenville resident who has been one of the leading proponents of a new school, advocates buying the land regardless of whether the District 200 can fund a building at that site.
“If it doesn’t happen, we’ve got 14 acres that we’d have to sell,” he said. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
Johnson, whose two children attend Hubble, said he believes Hubble is a difficult learning environment for students.
“I can’t imagine that a place as inefficient for heating and cooling as Hubble could be as good for education as a new building would be,” he said.
