No Rushed Pre-Election Lyons Township High Land Deal

LA GRANGE, IL – Lyons Township High School board members said this week they wanted to avoid cramming the sale of the school's Willow Springs land before the coming election.

On April 1, voters will decide on four of the board's seven seats. Only one of the five candidates is an incumbent.

At least two candidates have criticized the board's 2-year-old attempt to sell the 70 acres of wooded land.

At Tuesday's board meeting, members generally agreed to have the administration look further into a couple of options for the land.

One of them involves discussing a land swap with Pleasantdale School District 107 and Pleasant Dale Park District.

The school district has an elementary school next to the land, while the park district has property that juts out into the school's 70 acres.

High school officials have previously said some type of swap may make the high school's parcel more rectangular and thus more appealing to developers.

Board members are also open to the option of putting the land out for bid and requiring the winning developer to have discussions with the other public bodies about a swap.

Board member Tim Albores said he was ready to sell. But he said he understood the need to wait until after the election. The new board takes office April 28.

"I feel like we've been talking about this for a long time. We've done our due diligence," he said

But he also said the board should avoid a rushed decision.

Member Paula Struwing said she, too, was against deciding before the election. At the same time, she said the school should "keep the ball rolling" and investigate its options.

Members generally agreed to move the review forward, but not make any decisions on a sale until after a new board is seated.

In 2022 and early 2023, the board met behind closed doors for months to discuss its desire to sell to an industrial developer, even though Willow Springs zoning bars such uses.

During the secret discussions, members repeatedly referred to the need to take action before the April 2023 election.

"If we are going to do this, I think we should do it in a manner that it's a contract before the new board election," then-member Dawn Aubert said.

After residents' opposition, the board abandoned the plan to sell to an industrial developer weeks before the election.

The closed-session recordings were later released after the attorney general found the board broke the state's open meetings law.

In their campaigns, candidates Arlene Cabana and Elias Lopez have criticized the board's previous handling of the land sale. The other candidates are incumbent Gioia Giannotti Frye, who was appointed in November, and Shawn Kennedy and Chris Kozelka Campbell.

With the new board, only members Tim Albores, Kari Dillon and Jill Beda Daniels will remain. Of them, only Dillon and Daniels took part in the closed meetings in 2022 and 2023.

Those discussions were prompted by an industrial developer's secret offer of $65 million. The land is expected to draw far less for allowed uses such as residential.