Track and field planned at McHenry Middle School, plus more parking at Duker, Riverwoods

Additional on-site parking and changes to drop-off and pickup lanes could improve traffic flow around two McHenry School District 15 schools, officials from the district told local planning and zoning commission Wednesday.

The McHenry commissioners gave their nod of approval for those plans, which will now go on to the City Council for a final vote, possibly in February. Those conditional-use permit requests, however, did not come without concerns from neighbors about how traffic flow changes may affect their homes.

The district also sought the commission’s approval for plans to add a track and athletic field at McHenry Middle School. Neither of the district’s middle schools currently have tracks or sports fields, district Chief Financial Officer Jeff Schubert said.

First up was District 15’s request to add 31 parking spaces to the southeast side of Duker Elementary School. Located on Kane Avenue, the school shares a campus with Edgebrook School and is across the street from McCracken Field, where McHenry High School football games are played.

Currently, parents picking up and dropping off students at Duker both enter and exit from Oak Avenue, McHenry City Planner Cody Sheriff said. District 15 plans to expand the parking lot to connect it to Grove Avenue, allowing parent traffic to enter on Grove and exit on Oak.

Currently, Grove Avenue dead-ends at the school district property. There is a gate there leading to a path the city uses to access a nearby sanitary sewer pumping station.

“We want to keep the nice tranquility that we have enjoyed for over a decade there,” Grove Avenue resident Kathy Podborny said of their dead-end street.

Another resident was concerned because her house is only 10 feet from the property line, and the parking lot would be 10 feet from that, putting her home just 20 feet from a parking lot.

Due to the neighbors' concerns, the planning and zoning commission added conditions to the district’s proposal, including requiring along the property lines “canopy to canopy” trees that touch and that are at least 6 feet tall at the time of planting. The district must also keep a gate at the end of Grove Avenue that would be locked after school and on weekends.

District 15 has already gone to bid for the parking lot redesign, Schubert said. He did not say at the meeting if the conditions added by the commission would change those bid documents.

At Riverwood Elementary School, the district is seeking to add parking behind the school and add a bus lane. Currently, the bus lanes are in the front of Riverwood and parent drop-off is in the back. The proposed change would swap where buses and parents pick up and drop off students.

The new bus configuration is needed because the school now runs more buses, Schubert said. Students attending Riverwood who live across Crystal Lake Road are now bused, as the state recently designated Crystal Lake Road as a dangerous condition. That means students cannot walk across the busy roadway and must have the option to be bused.

Buses would now enter and exit Riverwood from Glenbrook Trail, and parent pickup/drop-off would be entering from and exiting to Driftwood Trail in the front of the building. That reverts to the layout in 1995 when he was attending school there, Sheriff said.

Lastly, the district asked for permission to build a track and field at McHenry Middle School.

“We want this to be a community stadium,” Schubert said, while giving students new outdoor space for physical education and track and field competition.

District 15 “is one of the few school districts that do not have track and field for middle school-aged children,” Sheriff said.

The fields proposed at the McHenry Middle School would not have lighting, sound amplification or permanent bleachers, Schubert said.

Plans are to break ground as soon as final approval from the city council “with substantial completion by early August,” said Dalton Pafford of Byrne & Jones Construction.

The facility would also be shared with Parkland Middle School, Schubert said, with future plans to add a track at that building.