I am only an 8 yr resident of the town----but answer me why is Geneva against progress. If the building cannot be re-furbished or used in its present state for viable commerce enterprises---let it go!!!

Perhaps (AFTER A FULL FUTURE COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS) the most intelegent choice might be:
-keep the admin in 4th street (don't need new fancy offices) and rent the excess to private offices. space renters.
-demo Coultrap building to eliminate yearly maintenance
-save the 'dirt- land' of Coltrap for potential 'real - true' future needs perhaps for the high school in 5-10 years
-this might provide the highest balance of future options without adding major NON-PERFORMING office location expenses for administration that don't directly contribute educational advancement.

To Mr. Bellinger, with respect: Your comment indicates more of a Carol Stream or Bolingbrook sensibility toward the relative importance of history than a Geneva sensibility. What made you choose to move to Geneva, versus numerous other communities where concern for historic preservation isn't such an evidently pesky irritant?

As I said publicly before the Board of Education a few months ago: With the possible exception of City Hall and the Kane County Courthouse, I'd submit that there is no more historically significant public structure in this community than what we know as the Coultrap building at 1113 Peyton St. For more than 70 years, if you were a public-school student anywhere in Geneva, you studied and grew in that building -- which was constructed as Geneva's first High School in 1923 and became its Junior High/Middle School from 1958 to 1994.

Having said that, I have great respect for the Board of Education, and full cognizance of the fiscal challenges facing it. It would certainly be gross irresponsibility to suggest maintaining a mostly empty building simply as a monument.

But it seems to me that the concept of moving Central Office to Coultrap -- with perhaps some of its space to be used for "overflow" of ancillary Geneva High programs -- makes no less sense today than it did the better part of a decade ago when it was first seriously considered. The Fourth Street School property, by virtue of its location alone, would seem much more marketable.

I have come to believe that it is not entirely wise for the City and the School District to make future plans for Geneva separately from each other for the simple reason that what each does effects the other. Each entity should not be operating in a vacuum, so to speak, independently of each other.

For example, a plan sometimes called “the downtown shuffle” has been suggested in order to utilize existing buildings and still meet the need to expand. A possible variation on this might be for the District to move their offices to Coultrap, the City to move City Hall to Fourth St. School, and the Library to expand into City Hall. This might well provide the room that everyone needs without spending huge amounts of money demolishing historic buildings and building new.

That’s not a plan, simply a suggestion to illustrate the idea that there may be many other ways to approach these issues and we need to all work together in order to explore them rather than rushing into a decision that may prove to be regrettable. 

I would like to propose is that we all form a joint planning committee that includes representatives from the School District, the City, the Library Board. and the tax payers and that this committee be given sufficient time to get independent evaluations (self funded if need be), study all of the options, and to make well informed, comprehensive, non binding recommendations based on the needs and wishes of all of the parties involved.

Great comments and creative options. Watch the Geneva History Center's latest GHC Minute on the Swedish Lutheran Church that includes video of the demolition of the building as a visual of such a loss. http://youtu.be/9byVltsM94E

I don't think I'll ever understand how Geneva has figured out all of the schools logically. I mean 2 middle schools right next to each other? I would have made sense to keep GMS for the west of Randall kids and to turn Coultrap back to a middle school for the old Geneva kids. We keep building new schools as we have old schools all over the place.