Let’s see. Given a choice between a currency exchange at Harlem and Roosevelt and a pot dispensary, we’ll take cannabis any day of the week. In a surprising but welcome development, Forest Park has a crack at landing a third dispensary that would replace the currency exchange.
While a few immediate neighbors object, we don’t see much added traffic impact from a dispensary. And the bonus in local sales taxes would be notable and welcome. The Planning and Zoning Commission is rightly asking for more detailed plans, adjustments to in-and-out traffic patterns and a smaller sign.
With those changes, we are in full support.
That damn Harlem viaduct
If at first — or third, or seventh — you don’t succeed, then try, try again. That ought to be the mantra of the villages of Forest Park, River Forest and Oak Park as they finally scored a modest success in gaining state funding for a study of the obsolete bottleneck that is the Harlem Avenue viaduct at South Boulevard — or is it Circle Avenue, or Central Avenue, or North Boulevard?
The tangle of street names is a small indicator of the complexity of finding a path to finally fix what is so obviously a traffic snarl.
Three towns, a state route overseen by the Illinois Department of Transportation, a railroad bridge owned by the recalcitrant Union Pacific Railroad (UP) which carries freight traffic, and commuter traffic for the CTA and Metra. It is also the western terminus for the CTA’s Green Line.
So many stakeholders with competing needs and, in the case of the UP, selfish desires.
The railroad, which has owned the train trestle and the Harlem bridge for a century, has pre-demanded that its cooperation in the rebuilding is contingent on IDOT accepting ownership of the new bridge and being responsible for its upkeep forevermore.
River Forest won the planning grant from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity. And it has now let a contract with an engineering firm that will work to update the last planning done on this project, which dates back to 2008. The hope is that when there is a completed Phase 1 plan, it will open doors at the state and federal level to provide the considerable funding needed. Last year there was an estimate of $30 million to reconstruct this viaduct — i.e., lowering Harlem a bit to improve truck clearances, getting rid of the space-eating central piers, etc.
There are other notable logistical issues. One is the desire of the CTA to continue to use its western terminus throughout a lengthy construction cycle. They suggest work should be done only during off hours. That would create an endless project that could wreak havoc for both motorists and retailers adjacent to the viaduct.
Someday, somehow this viaduct needs to be completely remade. The challenges to getting there are many. Good that our three villages are united in this effort.