Oswego purchases land for $600K to expand public works facility

As Oswego looks to build a new public works facility to keep up with the village’s needs as it continues to grow, officials have determined that more land is needed for the project.

Itasca-based Williams Architects – which is working on preliminary designs for the new facility – has said that additional property is necessary to build a facility lasting to 2050 and beyond.

At the Jan. 21 Oswego Village Board meeting, village trustees voted to purchase a 2.5 acre parcel in the Stonehill Business Park for $600,000.

“We’ve outgrown our current facility and we are in the process of designing a new one,” Oswego Village Administrator Dan Di Santo said during the meeting. “We have an architect working on it right now. As the design began, we realized we really needed additional property. The property that we have, while it could work, would really cramp the expansion and maybe put us in the same position in the future. We’d rather have this building last for 50 plus years.”

The property is located immediately east of the current public works facility at 100 Theodore Drive. In December, village trustees unanimously approved hiring Williams Architects to design the new building.

The firm recently did a space needs assessment to determine the needs for the public works facility in the next 20 years.

The current public works facility was constructed in 2002. Right now, numerous pieces of equipment have to be stored outdoors because there is a limited amount of space in the building.

Nineteen pieces of equipment – valued at between $2 million and $2.5 million – have to be stored outdoors. In addition, there is no office space left in the building.

There has been a plan to expand the existing building since 2008, knowing that the village was growing. The existing building was constructed for a population of 20,000 to 25,000.

Oswego now has a population of more than 34,000, according to the 2020 U.S. census.