School District Threatens Deannexation from Wirtz Development

The clash between the Wirtz family and Mundelein school district officials over the massive Ivanhoe Village development is heating up again, with threats of a deannexation play to remove the site from the district’s jurisdiction altogether.

Fremont School District 79 officials contacted four neighboring school districts about potentially annexing the 700-plus-acre Ivanhoe Village site, they said in a March 18 letter to Mundelein Mayor Steve Lentz, Crain’s reported. The land has been in the Wirtz family for six generations.

If any of those districts express interest, the district says it will pursue detachment of the site, citing the “unsustainable financial burden” of serving up to 940 new students it projects to enroll as Wirtz Realty Corporation’s 3,600-home development is built out over the next two decades.

The suburb annexed the Ivanhoe Village land in late 2022.

The letter follows a renewed round of talks earlier this month between the Wirtz family and local school leaders after negotiations collapsed in January.

Fremont officials say the Wirtz team recently offered a $3.8 million impact fee, while the district is seeking $90.1 million — about 75 percent of the projected cost of building a new school.

The district would be open to structuring a rebate program if tax revenue from the site proves sufficient over time, Fremont Superintendent Trisha Kocanda said. But she emphasized that Fremont doesn’t have the space to serve the incoming students and can’t wait until after they arrive to start building.

Mundelein officials pushed back, posting a statement disputing the district’s enrollment projections and citing regional data showing enrollment has dropped more than 9 percent in the past five years, despite the addition of hundreds of new homes.

The letter drew mixed reactions from nearby districts.

Some said they don’t have the capacity to absorb Ivanhoe Village, while others are reviewing the proposal. The Fremont superintendent acknowledged the detachment plan is “atypical” and would require creative redistricting but insisted the Wirtz proposal as it stands would unfairly offload school construction costs onto current residents.

The Wirtz family has not publicly commented on the school district’s latest proposal. A previous plan for the village to vote on impact fee terms earlier this month was postponed to allow talks to continue.

— Judah Duke