Bartlett High reveals plans for its own stadium

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Bartlett High School Complex

Updated: March 28, 2012 9:49PM

When Suzanne Colombe was a little girl, she attended every Elgin High School Maroons game at Memorial Field, she said. She wore every Maroons sweatshirt her older siblings passed down.

“I knew nothing as a girl about any of the academics that went on at Elgin, but I knew I wanted to go there. I wanted to be a Maroon,” Colombe said.

Now she hopes she can inspire that same excitement in a new generation at Bartlett High School, where she is principal.

Colombe, members of the Bartlett High School Boosters Club and U46 architect Gary Berna presented plans for the high school’s first activities complex recently to the School District U46 Board of Education.

The principal said she has four basic goals every day: for all students to attend every class period every day; to provide the safest environment possible; for all students to find an interest to pursue as a lifelong passion; and to make academics a focal point for her students.

Getting those students excited about coming to her school, she said, is “half of our battle.”

And the plans for an activities complex where students can attend events before they even enter high school are “a long time in coming,” U46 Superintendent Jose Torres said.

The school even has tried twice before to build its own stadium — once in 2004 and once in 2006.

Its current plans would develop the existing track and field area at Bartlett into a stadium for high school and community events, according to Berna. Bartlett teams currently play “home” games at Millennium Field on the campus of Streamwood High School.

Its construction would come in three major phases, he said. The track and field would be developed first, then a concessions area and bleachers and finally storage area, washrooms and lockers.

“The project you’re looking at is definitely pie-in-the-sky, meaning we are going for absolutely everything,” said Seth Lewis, project chair.

And it likely will cost about $7 million, according to Lewis, who announced the plans to the school board last month.

“A project like this can take many years, and sometimes they die in the first year because the people with their heart in it graduate, and the dream dies,” Booster President George Kantzavelos said.

But Bartlett has planned for that, too, Kantzavelos said. He and Lewis both have younger children in U46. And the club has reached out to the community, as well.

It’s not the first U46 school to raise funds to build its own stadium. South Elgin High School broke ground on its own stadium this summer, the result of a successful fundraising campaign.

“We’re following South Elgin. We rode on their coattails to this point. We learned a lot of good things from them,” Kantzavelos said.

Bartlett is talking to businesses, village officials, even state representatives, Lewis said. It’s applied for about 85 different grants, he said.

And it has the support — just not financially — of the Board of Education. School board member Traci O’Neal Ellis said she is a Larkin High School graduate, but, “I’m rooting for your success on your pipe dream.”