Four CTA stations on the South and West sides just got a little nicer. Last week, city officials announced that the CTA has completed $12 million in short-term improvements at the Green Line’s 51st Street, Halsted, Cottage Grove, and Kedzie stops. The workforce for the project included subcontractors who graduated from CTA’s 2017 Green Line Small Business Initiative, in which small businesses and disadvantaged business enterprises (women- or minority-owned firms) were provided training and assistance to help them compete for station-related work.
“We launched the Green Line Small Business Initiative to ensure that small and local businesses that otherwise may not have had the resources or knowledge to compete for work on CTA projects could participate in the process,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel in a statement. “I am happy to see that CTA’s diversity outreach efforts have created a larger, more diverse pool of candidates to compete for CTA construction project work.”
Of the 24 small and local businesses that participated in the initiative, four received DBE certification through the program, officials said. In addition, six firms were able to get subcontractor work on the four aforementioned Green Line stations, as well as the ongoing $50 million Garfield Green station reconstruction. On top of that, 13 firms received OSHA 30 training, ten received CPR training and nine were able to continue their education with the Clark Construction Strategic Partnership Program.
“The fact that these six firms were able to compete for and win these contracts tells us that our efforts are not in vain and that we are achieving our goal of building bridges between the community, small businesses and DBEs, and CTA,” said CTA President Dorval Carter, Jr. “I am encouraged by these results, but I also believe that the success of our diversity efforts shows that we can do more and go even further in our goal to build an even more diverse pool of contractors that can work with us.”
The contract for rehab work on the 51st Street, Halsted, Cottage Grove and Kedzie Green Line stations was awarded to F.H. Paschen. Paschen then hired several subcontractors to meet the project’s DBE goals, as well as some of the participants of the Green Line Small Business Initiative.
The DBE participation for each station included 35% at 51st Station, 40% at Cottage Grove, 40% at Halsted and 35% at Kedzie. Companies that worked on the Green Line stations included The Giant Painter, which painted the Kedzie and Halsted stations; R.E.A. Masonry, LLC, which worked on Halsted; Synergy Development, which provided their services at Cottage Grove and Halsted; Bartech Group, which worked at Kedzie and Halsted; and Alpha Phase, which worked on the 51st Street station.
To-date a total of 24 firms have participated in the Green Line Small Business Initiative.
The four Green Line stations received the following improvements:
- Replacement of existing light fixtures with LED
- Cleaning and polishing of all stainless steel surfaces
- Painting of the stairwells and stair structures
- Exit stairs have been repaired
- Adding ADA-compliant hand rails
- Adding new stainless steel and glass storefront doors with frames
- Power washing the interior and exterior walls, glass and steel façade
- Adding new station identifier signage
- Sealing roof to wall connections
A similar labor approach was taken for the CTA’s 2013 South Red Line reconstruction project. According to officials, during the five-month long rehab, the CTA exceeded its DBE participation goals by working with 39 minority-owned companies.
