A New, Smaller Burr Ridge Village Hall?

BURR RIDGE, IL — The Burr Ridge Village Board has no plans to make a decision anytime soon on the fate of Village Hall.

But the village's administrator told trustees last week that millions of dollars must be spent on the structure in the coming years. That prompted the mayor to say the village should seriously consider a new building.

At a board meeting, Administrator Evan Walter presented a report on Village Hall and other buildings. Village Hall is rated as being in "fair to good" condition.

More than a decade ago, the police department moved out of Village Hall and into a new structure next door.

According to Walter's report, Village Hall, built in 1985, has a number of issues:

• Greenhouse windows in the staff lunchroom are rotting, requiring immediate replacement.
• The roof on the garage must be replaced immediately, as rotting through the shingles is widespread.
• The air handling units are at the end of their useful life, and all temperature controls need to be upgraded.
• The administration department's humidifier is not working.
• About half of the windows need to be replaced within five years.
• Interior lighting systems and the building's fire alarm system need full replacement within a decade.
• The freight elevator has failed.
• Complete flooring replacement is needed in public and working areas.

In total, the village has identified $3.5 million in Village Hall projects through 2031, at which point the building would be nearly a half century old. Walter described the building as "aging but not historic."

Mayor Gary Grasso said the village determined more than 10 years ago that the new police station was the biggest priority.

"We have a great police station, but this building continued to age and it hasn't aged well," Grasso said. "The facility doesn't come close to matching the reputation of this village. The men's room, and I presume the ladies room, is awful. The office we have is old, decrepit. The furniture is from the 1980s. Then there's a lot of work that needs to be done to just maintain the building."

Grasso recommended the village repair the building with a lot of foresight.

"There are decisions we're going to have to make," the mayor said. "We have put this building off for 15 years. It just wasn't built to sustain itself for a long period of time... We need to consider possibly a new village hall."

In December, the village became debt-free when it finished making payments on the police station.