Arlington Heights eventually could become home to two very different new football facilities. Both are beset with controversy.
The Chicago Bears still are weighing whether to consummate a marriage with Hammond, Indiana, or build instead on the former Arlington Park site off Northwest Highway and Route 53.
And the St. Viator Lions of Arlington Heights are hoping for a new home field of their own.
St. Viator High School has called the suburb home since 1961, but its athletic facilities never quite caught up with the rest of the campus, and school leaders are pushing ahead with a long-desired overhaul of its sprawling “backyard.”
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Many neighbors, however, are less than pleased.
Drive along Dryden Avenue west of campus, and you’ll notice that along this street peppered with tidy million-dollar homes, “NO to St. Viator’s Stadium in our Neighborhood” signs are arranged amid the neat shrubs and well-watered flowers.
A most orderly thumb to the nose at the pesky Catholics across the way.
The arguments against the Viator complex sound to us a lot like the objections Evanstonians raised over the new Ryan Field. People who live close to Ryan Field say they are concerned about noise and traffic and parking and a sense that they’ll be forfeiting some of their quiet suburban comfort by virtue of living next to a new stadium (or “entertainment complex” as one letter writer put it to us).
The biggest difference, of course, is about 33,500 seats. Plus six blockbuster concerts.
Ryan Field is a stadium. Viator merely is proposing fields with bleachers.
Somewhere kids who go to the school can play soccer, football and more while a few hundred other students and family members watch.
It’s all privately funded, too, and school officials say that it won’t affect tuition. No taxpayer dollars are involved, a relief to anyone living in the neighborhood as District 214 asks voters this November to approve $295 million in borrowing for improvements to its own facilities. Even the owner of a home valued at just $396,500 would pay an estimated $170 more a year in property taxes. We’ve voiced our opposition to this push before.
But we digress.
Point is, Viator and its supporters are footing the bill.
A school spokesperson says 80% of Viator students participate in athletics, no small feat given the hoops many have to jump through just to get to practices and games.
Want to play football? Pack in the car (or one of the school’s several 14-seater buses) and book it 4.5 miles over to Forest View Education Center, a roughly 15-minute drive. Want to run track? You’ll need to find your way to Harper College in Palatine, which can take half an hour or more in traffic.
Viator officials say bus and off-campus facility rentals cost the school well into six figures annually.
The planned development, the “stadium” on the signs, includes two fields, an eight-lane all-weather track and eight tennis courts. For the football team, there will be bleachers for home fans and visitors.
Opponents’ chief complaints relate to fears over increased traffic and street parking, light pollution and noise.
We spoke with village officials who said the parking issue is legitimate. Community members already claim Viator students parking on surrounding residential streets is a problem, and adding events to the campus means the school will need a workable plan to keep cars where they belong. So stipulated.
But remember, people nearby knowingly bought a home near a high school that has occupied this site since 1961.
That the school eventually would seek to improve its athletic facilities can’t possibly be shocking.
Of course Viator doesn’t get carte blanche simply because it owns the land. The village should also scrutinize traffic, lighting, drainage, noise and require sensible accommodations for neighbors. But we see no reason those problems can’t be solved, or why they should doom an otherwise reasonable project.
Ohio State’s not coming to town, and neither is anyone on the Billboard Hot 100.
There are only a handful — five max — of home football games each year.
Viator hopes to have athletes on the field in late fall 2027, but it has a lengthy review process to navigate first.
We have little doubt that the new sports complex would be a boon to the school and its athletes. A 1,500-seat high school athletic complex need not become the dystopian nightmare some opponents envision.
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Perhaps Arlington Heights neighbors should save some of their ire for the public school district that wants to hike their taxes. We hear those schools have full-blown stadiums.
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