ANDERSONVILLE — A year after the Chicago Board of Education OKd a proposal to sell the shuttered Lyman Trumbull Elementary for a housing/theater redevelopment, the building remains empty and the sale has not been completed.
Community groups, which made it clear ahead of the proposed sale that the building should be reused as a residential units with a theater component or a private, non-charter school, are losing patience. And whether it will contain either a theater or school is uncertain.
When proposals began for what would become of Trumbull, which closed in 2013 at 5200 N. Ashland Ave., residents made clear the building's next use should contribute in some way to the community. In September of 2015, the Chicago Board of Education approved a proposed $5.25 million sale to Svigos Development, which planned a 49-unit development with a theater.
About a week ago, TimeLine Theatre Company backed out of its deal with Svigos Development.
"Now, the fear is we're getting neither" a theater or school, Cameron Kreiger, president of West Andersonville Neighbors Together, said after their quarterly meeting on Thursday, the anniversary of the sale.
She suspects the community is getting "fleeced" and a private school that was the second highest bidder has issues with the way the process has worked.
Community meetings were held about what should be done with the school across four wards and an online survey resulted in a couple hundred responses, said Ald. Pat O'Connor (40th).
Kreiger said through those efforts "it became clear people wanted something to give back to the community" and that the winning project "needed to have some connection to the community if you were going to close our elementary school."
The surveys indicated residents wanted a theater on the first floor, condos above the theater and wanted city landmark status because the Trumbull building, which opened in 1909, "has some architectural significance," said O'Connor.
Adding landmark status may have cost them the theater, the alderman said at the Thursday meeting, because "those [landmark] requirements made it difficult for TimeLine to make a state-of-art theater."
Announcing last week the theater's termination of the deal, TimeLine board president John Sirek said the theater had worked for a year to develop "financial and architectural plans that could meet both the theatre’s artistic and operational needs as well as the developer’s needs."
But "after extensive and exhaustive work, it has become clear that there is an inherent conflict between what renovations are allowed in order to meet the requirements related to the developer’s tax credits, and what renovations are essential to meet TimeLine’s goal of building a flexible and intimate home that supports the technical and audience engagement needs of our professional theatre," Sirek said in a press release.
The theater wanted to level the floor, add lights to the ceiling and take out a staircase, which conflicted with requirements for landmark status, O'Connor said. While the theater made adjustments, ultimately it was decided it wasn't worth spending the money, the alderman said.
Svigos Development remains the "contract purchaser." The agreement with the board of education requires Svigos to use the building "for a mixed use development incorporating a maximum of 49 residential units and an established, local, Chicago-based theater that provides performances and educational programs open to the community."
Developers are currently in contact with four or five theaters interested in filling the role, including the Neo-Futurists and several others within a mile of the property, O'Connor said.
The board of education may be interested in moving forward with the deal without a theater deal in place because it doesn't want to financially be responsible with maintaining the building during the winter, said O'Connor. The alderman added he hasn't asked the board to withhold the sale because other groups in the ward should be consulted first, he said.
If the deal falls through, the second highest bidder, the Waldorf School, "is not a bad second option and it wouldn't be the end of the world if that was to happen," O'Connor said. However, the building may need "significant repairs," which may push the price higher than the school was ready to pay.
Representatives from Waldorf attending the meeting seemed offended at O'Connor's comment. Mike Rosenthal, representing Waldorf at the meeting, said the school's bid was "significantly higher" than the third place bid and only $150,000 less than Svigo's bid.
Rosenthal said Waldorf and the developers seemed to be given different timelines of how long the deal would take to close.
While he believed the Svigos deal was supposed to close within 14 days of the September approval by the school board, the offer to purchase specifies the sale must close within 14 days of City Council approval, he said. The City Council has yet to approve the deal.
The reason the deal hasn't closed within the year, O'Connor said, is because "we kept faith" with the theater and developers.
"I don't know how much more complimentary I can be to Waldorf... You just didn't bid high enough," he said. "We're not on a different page and we do not need to be adversarial."
Some attendees also made it clear they weren't opposed to Waldorf if the Svigos deal falls through.
While the school could not provide the community a full-time theater like TimeLine Theater, it said it had previously created a partnership with local groups like CircEsteem and Pivot Arts.
"We’re willing to bring the community in," Rosenthal said, adding "the arts play a very key role in our school.
O'Connor said he would reach out to the board of education and set a date for a larger community meeting to discuss the development.
