Proposal to raze former Oswego junior high school for residential development moves ahead

A developer is proposing to raze the former Traughber Junior High School at 61 Franklin St. in Oswego and build a residential development that would include townhouses, apartment buildings, a playground and a dog park.

The real estate development team of JTE Real Estate and architecture firm Cordogan Clark submitted the proposal. Last December, Oswego School District 308 took requests for proposals to redevelop the former school into a multi-use sports facility.

The one proposal the district received was from JTE Real Estate and Cordogan Clark. Oswego School Board members discussed the proposal at their July 7 board meeting.

The building currently is a satellite location for the Kendall County Community Food Pantry. The food pantry, which operates once a month, has provided canned/non-perishable food items, as well as produce and bread, to families living within the District 308 attendance area.

The nonprofit organization Community Cares also uses space in the building to provide assistance to children and families, such as making sure families have the school supplies they need before students return to the classroom in the fall.

District 308 chief financial officer and chief school business official Raphael Obafemi told board members the district is spending thousands of dollars each year for its upkeep. A plan in 2018 to turn the building into a senior housing complex fell through.

“We continue to spend an estimated $250,000 a year just to keep the building from falling down,” he said.

The building served as the original Traughber Junior High School until the current Traughber Junior High School was built in 2008. The property is 12 acres in size, with the building sitting on four acres.

“You have eight acres of just open space,” Obafemi said. “They will assemble all 12 acres and use it for development.”

The Oswego School Board is considering a plan to convey the property to the village of Oswego and to come up with a revenue sharing agreement between the two bodies.

The property is located in a tax increment financing district. When a municipality creates a TIF district, its property assessment is frozen and new or increased taxes generated by improvements are used to pay for improvements or other development incentives.

“With the development that is being proposed, we believe there will be growth in the value of the property, which will lead to increments in the TIF district,” Obafemi said.

The School Board is set to decide at its July 28 meeting if it wants to move forward in conveying the property to the village. After that, the village would start reviewing the proposal.

The TIF district is set to expire in 2040, Obafemi said.

“As soon as the property gets on the tax rolls and is assessed, we’re going to start getting some increment from the TIF,” he said. “We won’t have to wait until 2040. If everything goes well, it probably will be assessed in 2028. So we’ll start seeing money from 2028 on. And then when the TIF expires in 2040, all that money will come to us. Because it will no longer be in a TIF district.”

The development is expected to generate $700,000 overall in property taxes in the first year, Obafemi said.

“We are the largest taxing body, so we would see a big chunk of that,” he said.

Oswego Village Administrator Dan Di Santo noted that when the village established the downtown TIF district in 2016, it made sure to include the former Traughber Junior High School.

“It was always our intention that the TIF district include Traughber to help the district,” he said. “It was always supposed to be a partnership.”