Aurora moved closer this week to tearing down the former YMCA building at Garfield and View streets.
The City Council Committee of the Whole on Tuesday night endorsed a bid to tear down the building for $1.5 million from American Demolition Corporation, of Carol Stream.
The company would have 160 days to do the job once the City Council approves the contract. The earliest the council could do that is late February.
The teardown would end a five-year odyssey in local administrative court and county circuit court to have the former YMCA building torn down.
The city filed for demolition in circuit court as far back as September 2020, and the courts have agreed to let the city tear it down, according to John Curley, the city’s chief development services officer.
“We do not own the property, but we have the court order to tear it down,” he said this week.
The 180,000-square-foot building once housed the YMCA and its fitness and exercise programs, as well as apartments.
On Aug. 7, 2019, the city posted the Garfield Apartments in the building as unlawfully occupied, and on Aug. 22, 2019, ordered the eviction of 30 people in the apartments.
The building had been cited with problems numerous times, but the city was responding to some issues that developed in July 2019 as the final straw.
The building owners put evicted residents up in a hotel for a while in 2019, and paid them $1,000 each to help find new housing. The city assisted in a search for affordable units for the residents at that time.
Curley said the building has been cited for 48 violations during the past decade, and has had seven trespass break-ins since the building was condemned and sealed off with chain link fence a couple of years ago.
The building is owned by Freedom Development Group LLC-Aurora. The court order only permits the city to demolish the building to mitigate the safety hazard, according to Curley.
The $1.5 million contract for the demolition could change, because that includes remediation that might be necessary of materials in the building. Curley said that cannot be completely determined until the project starts, in part because there is still water in the basement that has to be drained.
The water came from a spring that was discovered below the property when it was built on in 1949. All those years it functioned as a YMCA, the water from the spring was pumped out.
The mitigation is one of the reasons city staff recommended the American Demolition bid over two other bids that were technically lower. The lowest bid was from a company that does not have an apprentice program, which automatically made them unqualified, Curley said.
The second-lowest bid did not provide unit prices. Curley said that was important because that will determine exactly how much the remediation will cost, once it is determined.
Some $500,000 of the contract is for remediation, but the company will come back with multiple bids for remediation once it is determined, officials said.
When the building is torn down, the underlying zoning is B-1, with a special use for high-intensity training.
Curley said that because the special use is so specific, and included remodeling of the existing building, city staff would take the position that both the special use and new zoning would be needed, if a proposed use was not appropriate for the B-1 zone.
Both changes would require a public hearing before the City Council, Curley said.
The Aurora YMCA called the building home for 49 years before leaving in May 2007. The Aurora Y merged with the Heritage YMCA, which has facilities in Naperville and Oswego, and Heritage decided it was too costly to keep the Aurora building open.
slord@tribpub.com
