In early October the DeKalb Park District found a bargain for a little over $400,000.

Rather than renovate and build an addition onto the current building in Hopkins Park (across from Jewel on Sycamore Road) for $500,000, to expand the operations of the existing maintenance facility, the Park District purchased a facility with three buildings at 1205 E. Locust from Hallgren Lumber Company for $410,000. Dave Emanuelson, of the Park District, outlined several other advantages to buying the Hallgren site.

“Our alternative was to build an addition onto the old metal building, the maintenance shop, but that would consume park land,” Emanuelson said. For $500,000 the Park District would have been able to create an 8,000 square foot space. For $90,000 less the Park District was able to acquire three buildings from Hallgren which collectively have 49,000 square feet.

Additionally, Emanuelson said, “Buying a new facility on brown field has meant we could tear down the metal building and turn the four acres of land now occupied by the metal building into park land.” A brown field, Emanuelson explained, “is a rust belt – abandoned industrial property.”

Both lumber businesses and the facility on Locust have a long history in DeKalb. Halgren said, “My father [Thury Emanuel Hallgren] bought Hussey Lumber Company in 1935. Hussey was founded as Schimmelhorn in 1867. In 1943 or ’44 while I was in the war he bought the facility from American Steel & Wire Company. American Steel already had closed shop but still owned property all over town. They owned almost everything east of Fourth Street to the end of town, as well as the facility we bought. My brother [Kenneth Hallgren], sister [Margerie Cowder] and I took over the company after our father retired in the late ’50s. I took over in ’83 or ’84.”

Hallgren Park was named in honor of Conrad’s late elder brother Kenneth Hallgren.

In 1995, Alexander Lumber purchased the Hallgren Lumber Company business, but not the buildings, which are zoned for heavy industry from Conrad Hallgren and his fellow shareholders in the company.

“They made us an offer we couldn’t refuse,” Hallgren joked. Hallgren estimated that Alexander Lumber at one point owned or controlled 80 to 100 lumber yards in Illinois.

Alexander Lumber built a new facility in Cortland, leaving the buildings on Locust vacant, so Hallgren put them on the market earlier this year. This attracted the Park District’s attention as the board was mulling over whether it would be better to renovate and expand the shop in Hopkins Park or build an entirely new facility.

As the Park District’s employees are conservationists at heart, they were happy to be taking over land that already had been put to industrial use rather than expanding the building in Hopkins Park, which would have reduced the amount of space in a green field. Emanuelson compared this to Motorola constructing facilities in the green fields of Harvard, Ill.

Emanuelsen said,”Illinois has some of the best farm land in the world, so it is a waste to build factories on good farm land when old factories can be renovated.”

Not only will the Park District be able to avoid expanding out into green fields, but Hopkins Park actually will expand because of this. Money saved with this deal, which had been raised with non-referendum bonding authority, will be used to purchase more land for the park.

“We’re condemning four acres of property [adjacent] to Hopkins Park for $250,000,” Emanuelson said. Considering the building that will be torn down in Hopkins Park occupies four acres of land, the net gain for the park will be eight acres.

The facility will house all of the Park District’s equipment. Repairs will be performed on the equipment there. Vehicles currently stored outside the facility in Hopkins Park will be stored inside the new facility and will be washed there. Wood and metal shops will operate out of the new facility. Wood chips, gravel and sand will be manufactured and/or stored there. Emmanuelson said the Park District has not yet decided on what to name the facility.