A community center at Ehlert Park would be two stories tall and feature community spaces spread across both floors with a gym and second-floor track taking up much of the space. | Courtesy of Williams Architects 
A community center at Kiwanis Park would be three stories tall with a rooftop terrace, featuring the gym and exercise space on the second floor above ground parking and community spaces. | Courtesy of Williams Architects
Ehlert Park and Kiwanis Park have become the two sites in consideration to host a community center in Brookfield in response to an open survey of residents and feedback from public open houses.
Andy Dogan, managing principal of Williams Architects, told trustees at the Jan. 27 committee of the whole meeting that residents at an open house held Jan. 22 preferred Ehlert Park and the parking lot behind Village Hall near Kiwanis Park as potential sites in the first village board update on the project since October.
These two sites have since become the main focuses of further exploration for the community center’s feasibility, as a building of the imagined size of the community center — about 33,000 square feet — would not fit at Madlin Park, the St. Barbara Parish Center or the St. Nikola Serbian Orthodox Church, which were all previously being considered, he said.
Dogan said an open survey of residents, which could have included multiple residents from the same family or duplicate responses from individuals, found that about 60% of residents reported a need for more recreation facilities in town, which was “nearly identical” to the results of the statistically valid survey trustees heard about in October.
The open study also showed that about 60% of residents would be willing to fund the community center over the span of decades: 60.1% would pay $270 per year over 20 years toward $20 million in bonds, Dogan said, while 57.2% would pay $265 each year for 30 years to pay off $25 million in bonds. In the statistically valid survey, which filtered responses by household, only about half of respondents said they would be willing to pay these costs.
Looking at layouts
Kim Nigro, a senior project architect at Williams, told trustees Williams had created hypothetical layouts for two different community centers, one at Ehlert Park and one at Kiwanis Park, that take their location into account.
If the center were to go up at Ehlert Park, it would be two stories and about 32 feet tall to account for the proximity to residences on Elm and Shields Avenues, Nigro said. That layout would feature fitness rooms, general programming space and a gymnasium on the first floor with multi-purpose spaces and a two-lane track on the second floor. That center would either go in near the parking lot off Elm Avenue or south of the firehouse off Shields Avenue.
At Kiwanis Park, a potential community center would feature three stories alongside a rooftop terrace, with a total height of 52 feet. That layout would focus multi-purpose, general programming and administration space on the first floor next to about 25-30 covered parking spaces under the main gym space. The second floor would feature the gym and other fitness spaces while the third floor would feature a track on the outside with the rooftop terrace nestled within.
A center at this location could only go in where the basketball and volleyball courts now sit north of the parking lot, Nigro said. Big draws of this location, she added, would be its proximity to the central business district along Grand Boulevard and the notion of a “municipal campus” area around Village Hall.
At the open house hosted Jan. 22, about 70% of attendees preferred the Kiwanis Park location to one at Ehlert Park, Nigro said.
Dogan said it was too early in the planning stage for the project to estimate a definitive cost for the center but that architects would likely be able to work within the village’s budget and provide a range of costs based on different variables once a final location was decided.
Board direction
At the end of the presentation, the village board appeared split on which potential location trustees preferred. Trustee Julie Narimatsu said she preferred the location at Kiwanis Park because of the parking while Trustee Kit Ketchmark said he would prefer the location at Ehlert Park south of the firehouse because of concerns the center could negatively impact the appearance of Kiwanis Park.
Trustee Jennifer Hendricks recommended allowing residents to continue to send in feedback through an online survey until the board’s next meeting. Trustee Katie Kaluzny agreed, but said she would prefer a location at Ehlert Park to avoid overcrowding the Village Hall parking lot and interrupting the natural area near Salt Creek.
“It feels like the Kiwanis parking lot is trying to parking lot everybody’s things: the farmers market, the baseball games, Metra, and then trying to have a performance or another thing that you’re inviting a lot of people to,” she said. “I think you’d have to do a lot of extra scheduling to make sure that you’re parking everybody appropriately when having any sort of event, but I understand the lure of putting it there.”
Trustee Edward Côté said he would prefer the site at Ehlert Park unless the community center at Kiwanis Park included extra space for village purposes that would allow officials to move out of Village Hall so it could be torn down. Trustee Nicole Gilhooley said she also liked the idea of centralizing the community and village spaces within one building, but Assistant Village Manager Stevie Ferrari warned that doing so could increase the cost of the building from about $25 million, which could be covered through bonds, up to a range of $60 million to $100 million, which is too expensive to issue bonds.
Ultimately, at Village President Michael Garvey’s recommendation, the board directed the village to continue accepting resident feedback through an online survey that was available at the most recent open house so trustees can make a decision at the next meeting.
