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Business & Tech

Icons For Sale: Two of Four Cetron Parcels Still to Be Acquired by Geneva Library District

Part 6 of Summer Series: Geneva Public Library hopes to construct a new facility on Cetron property, but a site inspection is held up as the district awaits foreclosure process.

  • Editor's note: This is the sixth of a multipart summer series by Tara Knott and Garrett Lance looking at the iconic Geneva buildings for sale or facing future moves, and what those moves mean for Geneva's long-term development. See the series intro .

 

Last month, profane graffiti was on the side of the former Cetron building on 715 Hamilton St.—yet another dismal addition to the former factory that has been vandalized a number of times since its vacancy.

Looking at it today, the building hardly seems like a place for a library, but the Geneva Public Library District hopes to turn an eyesore into one of the community's greatest assets—a library campus to serve citizens for another generation.

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Space issues at the library’s current home on 127 James St. have sent the library in search of a larger property for nearly a decade.

In 2003, the library signed a contract with Kane County to acquire the Sixth Street School site. The county, however, never executed the contract. Further, neighbors complained about potential parking issues that a new library would bring.

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“The current library is 27,600 square feet and is adequate to serve a population of approximately 23,000 to 25,000. The current population of the Library District is over 31,000 people, based on our most recent census,” said Library Board President Esther Barclay. “Buildout of the entire district is expected to be 40,000 to 45,000 residents at some future date. The current building would not be able to handle this larger population and is barely adequate for serving the current population.”

At just over 2 acres, the four parcels of the Cetron property seem to fit the needs of the library.

Barclay points out that the property is not only big enough, but it also keeps the library near downtown, which is something many patrons have said they wanted.

“The Cetron property will give the library a large enough location to build a building that will provide the space necessary to sustain the Library District population of the future and keep the building downtown,” she said. “Not only will the site provide the necessary space for the building, it will also provide adequate parking and easy access to the building.”

Currently, however, the plan remains unrealized because the library has only acquired two of the four parcels.

In September 2010, the Library Board approved a resolution to purchase the four parcels for $2 million. A contract was signed between the library and Amcore Bank on these foreclosed pieces of land. After a few transfers, the Cetron property was acquired by Bayview Financial, which discovered that only two of the parcels had been foreclosed on by Amcore.

The library is still waiting for the titles on the remaining two parcels to be transferred to Bayview. In the meantime, the library is unable to conduct a site assessment.

Securing the Cetron property and constructing a new library will remain a long process. The library still must successfully acquire the site, draft a building plan conducive to zoning requirements and pass a referendum for building bonds to construct the new library.

Barclay says this process could take up to five years. For now, Cetron remains a deserted factory, waiting for a new life.

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