Few Buildings On "Save" List At Camp Algonquin Meet

McHenry County Conservation District plans for Camp Algonquin in rural Algonquin unveiled at an open house Thursday proved to be on the tentative side.  Three different options were offered and a site planner said there wasn't any reason parts couldn't be combined to create a fourth.

After seven months of study, the only common elements to the plans were the addition of about 1.5 miles of trails, type unspecified, and the preservation of the barn near the camp entrance off Cary Algonquin Road.  "It could be a farm stand," said MCCD Associate Landscape Architect Austin Taylor.  "And we might have some community garden plots."

Most of the rest of the 50 structures at the former campground weren't worth saving, Taylor said.  "There's the good, the bad and the ugly," he said, "and some have just exceeded their life expectancy." Only five buildings besides the barn made the possible preservation list among the three maps presented.

In one, only the Recreation Hall at the south end of the campground would be saved to rent out for meetings or celebrations.  In a second the camp's central modern Dining Hall would be saved for the same purpose.  In the third, the three Tribune Dorms at the north end of the camp would escape the bulldozers.  "We could rent them for weddings and parties and reunions," said Taylor.

Algonquin Community Development Director Russ Farnum said he liked the rental ideas.  At a planning session in January, "I was pushing hard to find some revenue-generating use for all the existing buildings."

The Master Plan for Camp Algonquin to be folded into MCCD's existing Fox Bluff complex will be posted for public comment for the next 30 days here: http://www.mccdistrict.org/web/ne-planning-development.htm

Taylor said he expected MCCD to announce final plans and a public hearing "around the Holidays, between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

In the pic:  New trails and keeping the barn are the only common points among three plans for Camp Algonquin.