We’re not exactly sure how to take the Park Ridge Recreation and Park District’s announcement that it won’t be going to referendum this November for the bond financing it needs to acquire and develop the Park Ridge Youth Campus property for Park District purposes.

Our suspicious nature would cause us question whether this is a conscious attempt by the Park District to avoid the traditionally heavier presidential election turnout – and the anti-tax voters who just might come out in droves to barbecue that pack of losers commonly known as the Illinois General Assembly who are all up for re-election in November – by pushing the referendum to the April local election, where turnouts are always lighter.

But from what we’re reading and hearing, while avoiding the bigger November turnout certainly may have been a factor in the decision, the more significant factor(s) may well be some changes in how the project might get done.

For example, it sounds like residential developer Mark Elliott may be walking away from his “partnership” with the District and may actually be preparing to compete with it for the Youth Campus property.  Rumor has it that Elliott was trying to push more costs onto the District and the District, for a change, pushed back.

But unless the owners of the Youth Campus are willing to sell it in pieces – which we doubt is the case – that means the Park District will need to spend $6.4 million to acquire the whole parcel instead of the $4 million-plus it was planning to spend on roughly 60% of it.  And as the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate recently reported, the high-end costs might be moving into the $15 million range.

Hello!

It’s too early to tell whether this Youth Campus plan will turn out to be  a sound “investment” or another publicly-funded goat rodeo.  We can see it both ways, although we’ll try to reserve judgment until the District figures out what it intends to do and then comes up with its business plan for how it intends to manage the new “campus” in an economically sustainable way.

But so long as the plan is to keep the Youth Campus property pretty much “as is” without any expensive new construction of immediately-depreciating public buildings, it will retain most of its raw-land value.  That will enhance its salability should it not be able to generate a reasonable rate of return from its operations.

Some additional good news is coming from the Park Ridge Historical Society, which announced that it intends to retain its current Solomon Cottage headquarters.  If Elliott walks away from the project, the Society may not even need to move the building from its current southwest-corner of the property location to the northern portion, as it had been discussing.  But either way, the Society claims it won’t need funding from the Park District or the taxpayers.

Well done, you zany local historians!

While we prefer referenda to be held during elections that promise the highest possible turnouts, the deferral of this one from November to April may have one positive effect: it may increase turnout in April, when the mayo r is expected to be running for re-election against at least one declared challenger, while 3 aldermanic seats (Wards 2, 4 and 6) and various School Board (both D-64 and D-207) and Park Board seats will be contested.

So that might be making lemons into lemonade.

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