Unused Joliet-owned gym needs a new roof

JOLIET – Joliet owns a gym – a little-known fact that came back to light when the city manager said it needs a new roof.

The city owns the cafeteria, too, in the old Joliet Catholic High School building.

Most of the old school has been converted into the Victory Centre of Joliet, an assisted-living complex for seniors. But the gym and cafeteria were donated to the city for potential community use in 1997 when Victory Centre was being developed.

The facilities have never been used and are blocked off from the rest of Victory Centre, City Manager Jim Hock said.

Hock said he has begun talking with social service agencies to see whether there is interest in operating a facility where homeless people can go during the daytime. He sees the available space as an opportunity to give homeless people somewhere to go besides downtown streets during the day when shelters are not open to them.

But the roof is going to need repairs, a job estimated at $67,000, Hock said.

“We have to do something with the roof at one point to preserve the building and make sure the floors don’t collapse,” he said.

Hock mentioned the city’s ownership at a City Council meeting last month during a discussion about future downtown development.

“I’m just a little perplexed that we own the building,” Councilman Jim McFarland said at the time.

The city owns part of the building facing Jefferson Street.

The space was donated to the city when objections were raised to plans to demolish the gym and cafeteria, which were not going to be used for senior apartments, said James Haller, director of community and economic development.

At the time, he said, the gym was seen as an opportunity to provide more recreation in the community, and the cafeteria was seen as potential meeting space. But the facility was never used.

Now, Haller said, there is no plumbing going into the gym and cafeteria, which also would have to be updated for handicapped accessibility.

“The sewer lines and the water lines going into the space have been cut off,” he said.

The Victory Centre had approached the city a few years ago with interest in using the space for seniors with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, Haller said. But the plan never developed.

A Herald-News story in 1997 quoted then-City Manager John Mezera saying he hoped a civic or government group would use the space for neighborhood or senior programs.

Mezera said then that rehabilitation of the space would cost about $300,000, primarily for new paint and a heating system.

“Our goal is to make it available to a community organization,” Mezera told The Herald-News. “We want to turn the facility back over to a productive use.”