With a building walk-through set for Jan. 13 and plans for a public Wilmette Park District meeting before Jan. 26 to debate acquiring its lease from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, the park district once again has the Sheridan Shores Yacht Club building at the Wilmette Harbor in its sights.
The building has been held by the yacht club since 1937 via a series of permits and leases, but the latest lease, which started March 7, 1986, expires March 6 of this year, MWRD public affairs spokeswoman Allison Fore said in an email. Bids for the new 36-year lease are due to the MWRD by Jan. 26, she said.
Park commissioners went into closed session for roughly an hour and a half Monday night immediately following their regular Jan. 11 board meeting, to hash out commissioners’ initial thoughts on the possibility of leasing the building. They took no action after returning to open session, District Executive Director Steve Wilson said later.
Board President John Olvany said Tuesday that he has asked Commissioner Bryan Abbott, who has an engineering background, to accompany district administrators on the Sheridan Shores walk-through, which is open to all potential lease bidders.
The park board will also hold an open meeting before Jan. 26 to hear what district residents and other members of the public think about a park district bid attempt, Olvany said.
He said that meeting, which will have to be publicized, could piggyback on one of the board’s already scheduled committee sessions, such as the parks and recreation committee meeting scheduled for Jan. 18 at 6:30 p.m.
“We’ll probably make an announcement Thursday,” Olvany said on Tuesday. “This is definitely going to be something that needs to be discussed in public session, and we want to get residents’ input.”
Olvany said the yacht club building, which also houses the Wilmette Harbor Association and the Sheridan Shores Sailing School at its 20 Harbor Drive location, “is a great asset, right next to our parks, and we’re going through a due diligence process that we should.”
But he also said he hopes there are multiple potential bidders for the property.
“I’d love to see a large number of bidders involved in the process,” he said. “That would be good for the public, for the harbor, for everyone. It’s not a question of the park district versus everybody else.”
The park district last considered taking on the yacht club building’s lease in October of 2013, when the then-current board park board commissioners agreed to at least preliminarily approach the MWRD about the idea. At the time, they said any use they could make of the building should be in line with their lakefront master plan.
In June of 2014, the MWRD shut down negotiations, telling the park district that it had decided to go to a public bidding process. On Dec. 17 of last year, the MWRD board officially agreed to go to public bid and bid process began Jan. 6, according to Fore.
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Despite that history, this is the first time the current board has considered a lease bid, freshman Commissioner Ryrie Pellaton said at the regular meeting, when the issue was brought up in public comments by district resident Tom Scanlan.
Scanlan, who headed the anti-park district bond referendum fight last April and who helped develop questions for the district’s lakefront use community survey, said he’d been getting questions from residents about the district’s interest in the yacht club building. He told commissioners people were telling him they didn’t see why the park board should consider leasing it.
“That’s interesting, because I don’t get a sense that a lot of people have been asking us those questions,” Pellaton said.
He also told Scanlan that criticism of the current board is “premature” until members have had the chance to talk about the lease situation, to hear public input on things like what the building might be used for, and to learn whether the building is in good shape.
Wilmette resident Steven Bobo, who heads the yacht club’s board of directors, said Jan. 12 that the building does have deferred maintenance issues. He also said the club has yet to make a final decision on whether to bid for a new lease. The board itself has met, but the membership will probably also meet before any decision is made, he said.
Doffing his club hat, Bobo said that as a park district resident, he was not sure the park district should consider taking the building over.
He noted that a previous park board considered, then rejected, the idea of bidding on an MWRD lease to manage Wilmette Harbor.
The board’s decision not to bid on the harbor lease occurred in 2012 after many district residents and harbor users objected to the idea.
“Just as they decided in the case of the Wilmette Harbor lease not to go there, I would think they should make the same decision in the case of the yacht club building,” Bobo said.
Twitter: @pioneer_kathy