Work is underway on a new Public Works building in North Aurora that will be five times bigger than the facility the department currently uses.
The new facility, expected to be completed sometime in the next 15 to 18 months, will replace the current building at 314 Butterfield Road in North Aurora that village officials said can no longer meet the needs of the Public Works Department.
The new structure is being built near the current facility on Butterfield Road. It will be 56,000 square feet, much bigger than the 11,000-square-foot building the department currently uses.
Village staff members said plans for the project began in 2019.
“This started with a needs assessment years ago to determine if we needed a bigger building for staff, equipment and operations, and once you do the needs assessment you basically work together to get a concept for a building,” said North Aurora Village Administrator Steve Bosco. “We started working on a concept, the board approved it, and we needed to find a home and went out to referendum and are pledging sales tax revenue to pay for it.”
North Aurora voters last spring approved a referendum question to increase the village’s sales tax from 0.5% to 1% to help fund future projects in the village.
Trustees have approved some alternative revenue bonds that will be used to pay for the majority of the roughly $18 million it will cost to build the structure.
North Aurora Village President Mark Gaffino said $4.5 million in village funds “which had been put aside” are also being used to pay for the new facility.
“This is our second recent capital project following the police building that was done some years ago,” he said. “We used some of our own cash and the rest is being paid through bonds.”
Bosco said the alternative revenue bonds for the Public Works building will be paid back thanks to the recent increase in the local sales tax approved by the voters.
“We did a referendum to raise our non-home-rule sales tax by half a percent and that increment is enough to pay the annual bond payment. Despite that, we are still tied for the lowest community tax rate in the area,” he said.
Gaffino said the Public Works project was made possible thanks to a cooperative effort between the village and the Southern Kane County Training Association, a non-profit group made up of the North Aurora Fire Protection District and the city of Aurora’s Fire Department which is currently running a training facility behind where the new building will be located.
“We took that front area and (Southern Kane County Training Association) will get our old building and a little land in the back,” Gaffino said. “This helps both groups out as we get the land and allow them to store some of their stuff they don’t have room for, plus a building with some office space.”
Bosco added the agreement allows the village to maintain a presence right where other resources are currently located.
The general contractor is Frederick Quinn Corporation out of Addison, who will be overseeing the work of more than 30 subcontractors to build the new Public Works facility.
Bosco said the new Public Works building is needed, as there is too little space in the current building.
“The existing facility is about 20% the size of what the new one will be,” Bosco said. “Right now, we have a significant amount of equipment that can’t fit under that building and is housed in multiple areas. We store almost all our Water Department vehicles outside and we don’t have adequate storage for all the things we put together for special events or operational equipment. Some of it gets stored outside, some in shipping containers.”
Room for staff, which has grown to 20 members, is another issue that needed to be addressed, he said.
“We don’t have enough room for our staff to be under one roof. We have one office shared by five people,” Bosco said. “The Water Department meets at the treatment plant that’s not designed to be meeting spaces. This building will allow us to store all of our vehicles and equipment all in one site under one roof, as well as all of our employees in one spot.
“This building will allow us to do things we don’t have room for. We don’t have a lot of ability to maintain vehicles properly. We have mechanics on staff but have limited space and ability of things they can do with equipment available to them,” Bosco said. “Part of the new building is a portion of it dedicated to mechanics that will allow us to work on four cars at one time. We’ll have additional lifts and more access to things like storage of tires, fluids and have systems in places so the mechanic can work.”
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
