After six months of negotiations, the city staff has presented aldermen with a proposed redevelopment agreement with Elgin developer Leopold Goldschmidt for the shuttered Batavia Junior High School downtown.
Goldschmidt is proposing to raze most of the former school at Illinois Highway 31 and Wilson Street and replace it with up to 200 units of senior housing and a small amount of retail space.
The city would work toward creating a tax-increment financing district out of the property, and use TIF bond funds to pay for public improvements and reimburse the developer up to $2.5 million in costs.
“It’s a key piece of property in the downtown area,” said Batavia Mayor Jeff Schielke. “We don’t want to do something to the downtown that we later decide we can’t live with.”
Schielke and Ald. Rory Weiler expressed doubt the document could be approved at the Oct. 3 City Council meeting, as recomended by the staff.
“As I sit here today, I don’t think I’m alone in believing some hard questions need to be asked,” said Weiler, chairman of the Judicial Services Committee, which will discuss the proposal Tuesday.
If the deal proceeds, Batavia Unit School District 101 will receive $1 million for the property, which it tried unsuccessfully to sell for more than a year before turning to the city for help in redeveloping the land using tax-increment financing.
Under TIF, municipalities set aside tax revenues to pay off bonds that fund public improvements related to redevelopment. Most of downtown Batavia is already included in a TIF district.
City Atty. William McGrath said the city needs to create a separate TIF district for the project, which is being called Batavia Commons.