Downtown Plan Sparks Concerns

DARIEN, IL — Two parents told the Darien City Council on Monday they feared a proposed downtown development would mean the closing of an elementary school and overcrowding in the other one. The mayor responded that if Lace Elementary shut down, then up to 16 classrooms would likely be added to Mark DeLay Elementary.

Darien School District 61's enrollment has dropped by 20 percent since 2002, but resident Anthony Ramos suggested that trend would not continue. He said the decrease was largely the result of the sluggish years after the 2008 crash and that the economy was bouncing back.

"Making decisions based on current enrollment patterns deflects potentially from some responsibility for the future," Ramos told the council. "Also, the classes I've seen at DeLay are well-populated. My first-grader is in a class of 24 to 1 in terms of the teacher-to-student ratio. Students can't be crammed into existing spaces if Lace were to be closed."

The proposed downtown development would be at the northwest corner of Cass Avenue and 75th Street, the site of Lace, the old Lace Schoolhouse Museum and Safety Village.

Ramos said all of the information he has found about the downtown proposal has been on Darien Patch. He noted Darien School District 61 has questions about the proposal. The answers, Ramos said, should be made available not only to the district, but the community as a whole.

Another resident, Cristina Holzman, who has three students in the schools, said she feared the district would repeat the experience of Brookfield, scaling back on space because of an enrollment decline, only to see it dramatically increase later.

Younger families, she said, want to move to Darien because of the quality of local schools, so officials should be careful before they make changes.

"I just bought my house not that long ago," Holzman said. "I looked at over 20 houses all within Darien. All the houses were being sold by people who were looking for a smaller place because they were nearing retirement age or someone unfortunately had died from the older generation. Just on my block alone, there are still six or seven houses where people are in their 60s, 70s or 80s."

She said all of her children have some form of special needs. When school space is reduced, she said, those with special needs are the first to suffer.

As he has before, Mayor Joseph Marchese said the downtown plan dies if the school district ends up opposing it. If Lace is moved, the district would likely have to add 15 or 16 classrooms to Mark DeLay.

"We are not looking to take 400 children and jam them into Eisenhower (Junior High) or the current Mark DeLay," Marchese said.

The mayor promised to keep the public in the loop about the plan.

"I have responsibilty as a mayor to provide services to you. In order to do that, we need to build our sales tax base because we don't want to increase property taxes," Marchese said.

A half century ago, residents of four residential subdivisions formed an association that ended up founding Darien. Because of that history, Darien has no downtown.

Last month, Marchese told the City Council that the development would promote "sustainable living" that could include apartments, condos, retail and parking. He called it the geographic center of town.