Bartlett High begins fundraising effort for own stadium

• Reprints

Updated: January 15, 2012 8:04AM

Less than six months after South Elgin High School broke ground on its first football and multi-use stadium, Bartlett High School has kicked off fundraising efforts for its own stadium.

Seth Lewis, a member of the Bartlett High School Booster Club, shared some of the club’s plans for the Bartlett High School Activities Complex recently with the School District U46 Board of Education.

“This is starting to take traction. The community of Bartlett is starting to become aware,” Lewis said.

Fundraising for a stadium for high school and community events is something the boosters have been considering for a while, Bartlett Principal Suzanne Colombe said. The school even has tried twice before to build its own stadium — once in 2004 and once in 2006, it has said.

Bartlett teams currently play “home” games at Streamwood High School’s stadium, where South Elgin also had played in previous years.

But now, the Elgin school district has put in place several new policies as South Elgin raised funds last school year for its stadium. The Bartlett Boosters also received an anonymous donation in May, Colombe said.

That donation came with the stipulation it would be used to start initial drawings and a field study of school property for a stadium, according to the principal. That already has been completed by DLA Architects, which also designed the South Elgin stadium.

And that, she said, “was really the impetus to the conversations and discussion. Certainly, they’ve been involved with the school district. They’ve been very supportive.”

Initial drawings of the stadium include a synthetic surface field and stands for at least 3,500 people, Colombe said.

The project would cost about $4.5 million, if the Boosters were to receive a large donation for that amount now, the principal said. But “as the years go on and the costs go up,” she said, that number will creep closer to $7 million.

Last month, Bartlett shared its plans with a group of district administrators, she said. It also discussed those plans with the community at a spaghetti dinner that “essentially was a fundraiser to start raising funds,” Colombe said.

The Boosters’ “end goal” right now is just to make a presentation to the U46 school board, Lewis said last week.

School board President Donna Smith encouraged the boosters after their treasurer spoke.

“Thank you for what you’re doing,” Smith said. “We laid out the groundwork, so just follow the policies, and you’ll be good.”