The roof of the city-owned Stadium Club has been converted into a patio as Joliet looks again to sell a building that it has marketed for years.

The rooftop conversion was made after the May storm that created winds as high as 95 mph and tore off a large part of the roof of the Stadium Club building that stands outside the right-field wall of DuPage Medical Group Field.

The city used $138,000 from an insurance claim to convert the damaged roof and has money left over.

“We actually got $308,000 for insurance,” Director of Economic Development Derek Conley said. “We anticipate keeping it (the $170,000 difference) set aside to put towards a future development at that property.”

The city does not have a future development lined up, but Conley said there are people who are interested.

“We actually have had some people reach out to us because they saw the outside patio as well,” Conley said.

Possibilities include some kind of combination of residential and restaurant.

Late local businessman Jeff Thompson had just such a plan when the City Council Economic Development Committee gave preliminary approval for $800,000 in incentives to help fund his project in October 2018. But Thompson died just a couple of weeks later, and the plan never moved forward.

The building was once a car dealership and was dubbed the Stadium Club by city workers after it was acquired by Joliet for storage when the city bought property for construction of the baseball stadium in 2002.

The building has not been used for anything else since, and the city has stopped using it for storage.

“We still think it’s a viable building and could be saved, so we decided to repair it rather than tear it down,” city Finance Director James Ghedotte told the City Council Finance Committee last week as he reported the job was completed and paid for.

Demolition costs in 2018 were estimated by the city at $400,000.