LTHS Leader's Number A 'Fallacy': Official

LA GRANGE, IL – Lyons Township High School apparently has no documentation directly backing up Superintendent Brian Waterman's assertion on the likely worth of the school's land in Willow Springs for allowable uses.

In a closed session in January, Waterman told the school board that the school would probably fetch $15 million to $20 million for its 71 acres under current zoning, which allows residential and small retail uses.

Patch filed a public records request with the high school for any documentation backing up Waterman's numbers.

In response, the school last week released its appraisal from May 10, 2022, that assessed the property for industrial purposes only, even though current zoning bars such uses. The property was appraised at $68 million, although it incorrectly included land owed by the Pleasant Dale Park District.

The report did not indicate what the school could get for the land for allowable uses.

In an email to Patch, Willow Springs Village Administrator Ryan Grace said Waterman's number was a "fallacy."

"To our knowledge, they performed no actual research or appraisal to obtain their claimed valuation of 15-20 million," Grace said. "The school district should have a proper appraisal completed at current zoning if they wish to continue with their sales efforts. Anything less is a disservice to the entire Lyons Township School District."

Waterman and school board members did not return emailed messages for comment Friday.

In an email Wednesday, the school's spokeswoman, Mary Lin Muscolino, pointed to a section of the appraisal for a listing of residential and commercial parcels in the general area, indicating a price range of $1.65 to $13.60 per square foot of land area.

The low end of the range, she said, is a parcel located in an unincorporated area that lacks municipal sewer and water. And the high end is a parcel in LaGrange that was acquired for multifamily residential development, she said.

At $1.65 per square foot, the school's Willow Springs land would have a value of $5 million, and at $13.60 per square foot, the lot would have a value of $41.4 million, Muscolino said.

She noted the appraisal included 13 comparable recent sale prices, with the median being $5.74 per square foot, which would be a total value of $17.5 million for the school's land, she said.

For months, board members have stayed publicly silent on the land sale, which they hoped would pay for building improvements at the two campuses.

In the closed sessions, board members grumbled about what they perceived as misinformation about their effort to sell the land.

At the same time, they spent much of the sessions talking about how they kept information from Willow Springs and other public bodies. They strategized about when they should open up about it.

In May, the attorney general ordered the school board to release the closed session recordings from January. That's because the board violated the open meetings law by discussing the sale behind closed doors.

After much opposition to the land sale, the school board abandoned the effort in March, weeks before the board election.