Lake County Gazette

Arlington Heights School District 25 has been working with the village board for several weeks on many school expansion projects. 

Early in February, they received approval and permits for expansion projects at Westgate and Dryden elementary schools, which included several new classrooms, gym spaces and an outdoor sports area. At the Feb. 21 council meeting, Ryan Schultz, director of facilities and operations for the school district, presented two more expansion plans to the board, including Patton Elementary. The expansion comes with the growth of the full-day kindergarten program, which will have more kids in the building throughout the day and will likely bring an increase in enrollment. The design commission and the planning and zoning board each approved the proposed plan with a unanimous vote.

“I also want to bring up and point out that we and our board are exploring the potential soon to expand the gymnasium, even though that's not included in this scope of work at this time,” Schultz said. “This is primarily focused on full-day kindergarten. We may be coming forward in the future to discuss a gym expansion like what we did at Windsor Elementary School several years ago. It's primarily being driven by the amount of P.E. sections that we need to have at the facility and the size of the current gym. We don't feel that it's adequate to support two sections of P.E., so we will be looking at that. 

"Again, this wasn't brought forth in the referendum; our board is exploring this further on the curriculum side if it would be warranted. Currently, the stormwater portion, though, we are designing for this facility will accommodate a gym expansion. So those are being considered already; the expansion of the gymnasium is being considered in the stormwater calculations for this portion of the project, just in case it would happen at any point in the future that our stormwater system would be able to accommodate the gym expansion if it was now or well into the future.”

The proposed site plan for the school asks for landscape variations for the parking lot to be able to omit some of the landscape islands to free up a few more parking spaces. They will be adding more trees and landscaping around the parking lot to try and supplement. They also are planning to put trees and hedges along the outside of the lot to add some separation between properties. 

They are also asking for a variation for a structure in the side yard instead of the rear. The new addition would be located between the original space, which houses the gym, and a previous classroom expansion and potentially next to the future gym expansion. The school ensured it has made adequate expansion for the stormwater system, including permeable pavers and green space. The council approved the plan, including the stormwater improvements.

“This is a really big improvement,” Jim Tinaglia, trustee of Arlington Heights Village Board, said. “I mean, it's a lot of money to put this kind of a storm system in under that parking lot and to add this kind of control for rainwater leaving the site. This is a big improvement for the neighborhood. The neighbors there should experience some help here with this. This is great. I just can't believe it's that big.”