Development

The Illinois Department of Transportation is pushing forward with the risky and unnecessary Illiana Tollway by announcing its "short list" of four finance and construction groups that can build the 35-mile Illinois portion. Streetsblog has reported abundantly from the Illinois perspective -- including a look at IDOT's own analysis showing a net decrease in Illinois jobs as a result of the project. But it's also worth taking a look at how the process -- and the opposition -- have played out in Indiana.

Streetsblog Chicago will not be publishing Monday. 

With Finkl & Sons Steel vacating 22 acres along Cortland Street between Clybourn Avenue and the Chicago River, the U.S. Environental Protection Agency has given the economic development corporation North Branch Works $200,000 to create a plan that keeps the area industrial. As part of this process, it's important for walking, biking, and transit to be integrated into the plan.

A new development threatens to degrade the pedestrian-oriented nature of one of Chicago's most walkable neighborhoods by building excessive car parking at a mixed-use project close to transit. In Wrigleyville, M&R Development is proposing 148 houses, 169,000 square feet of retail space, a health club, and 493 parking spaces at Addison Avenue, Clark Street, and Sheffield Avenue, a short walk from the Addison 'L' station.

Chicago-area transportation organizations are poised to shoot themselves in the foot and harm the region by allowing the Illinois Department of Transportation Department to squander limited transportation infrastructure funds on the $2.75 billion Illiana Tollway. On Friday the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning's transportation committee voted to recommend moving forward with this wasteful, destructive project, which promises to suck jobs from Illinois and send them to Indiana. It would create only 940 new jobs over the next thirty years.

In his keynote address for the American Public Transportation Association’s annual meeting yesterday at the Hilton, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said that quality transit is a cornerstone of his economic development policy.

Today’s roundtable at the Metropolitan Planning Council, “BRT: Moving People, Driving Development” looked at the potential of fast, reliable bus rapid transit to draw investment to urban corridors, and the benefits of transit-oriented development in general. The panel featured CEO Walter Hook and U.S. and Africa Director Annie Weinstock from the New York-based Institute for Transportation and Development policy, which has helped plan BRT systems around the world and is consulting on Chicago’s upcoming projects. Also appearing was Melinda Pollack, vice president for transit-oriented development with Enterprise Community Partners, a Denver-based affordable housing nonprofit.

A proposal to legalize transit-oriented development would make it easier to build walkable and bikeable neighborhoods, in part by halving the car parking requirement for residences and eliminating it for non-residential uses near train stations. The ordinance is set to go before aldermen at the zoning committee's next meeting in September. Right now, without the ordinance, launching a new business that complies with Chicago's parking minimums can be a ludicrous ordeal. Here's what two business owners in Logan Square had to go through to get around their parking minimums.

Earlier this week we wrote up the Center for Neighborhood Technology's report about how the Chicagoland region is falling behind other major American metro areas when it comes to focusing growth near transit stations. In Philadelphia, San Francisco, DC, and New York, most new housing is being built close to transit, but not in Chicago. Here, most growth is happening outside of walking distance to transit, and the "transit shed" is losing jobs faster than the car-dependent areas of the region.