The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago will reimburse the village for 70.1% of the construction costs of repaving two blocks worth of alleys between Harrison Street, Marengo Avenue, Harvard Street and Circle Avenue.
The project will make the alleys permeable, so some of the water would seep underground instead of going straight into the sewers. The agreement specifies that the alley design must capture at least 47,000 gallons of water during “any given rain event.”
The agreement is more than what Forest Park originally hoped for. When the village applied for MWRD grant in August 2022, it expected the district to only reimburse them for up to 60% of the construction costs. The project cost estimates provided to the village council at the time assumed an even smaller figure – roughly 50%.
The village will need to cover the costs up front, and it won’t be reimbursed for any engineering costs. Interim village administrator Rachell Entler told the Review that the village currently estimates that the construction would cost around $700,000. This is line with last year’s $704,775 construction cost estimate.
The agreement doesn’t mention the project construction, but it does cap the reimbursement at $494,000.
This cap became an issue with another green infrastructure project MWRD agreed to fund.
Last year, MWRD agreed to cover 70% of the costs of making the village hall parking lot permeable. But the project was derailed because the construction bids came back higher than expected and the district wasn’t willing to increase its share of the costs. The council ended up voting 2-3 against accepting the bid, with Mayor Rory Hoskins casting the deciding no vote.
The 2022 estimates that repaving the alleys with concrete would cost $646,800.
Commissioner of streets and public improvements Michelle Melin-Rogovin said she was pleased that MWRD will be covering the majority of the costs, given that half the costs reimbursement was a standard expectation for projects like this. She also said that the village will try to come up with grants and other funding sources to help cover the local match.
Flooding has been a recurring issue for Forest Park, as it has for many communities near the Des Plaines River. The July floods didn’t hit the village as badly as Cicero, Oak Park and Berwyn, but it still received 6 inches of rainfall within 12 hours. Several basements, including Hoskins’, were flooded, and so was the section of Eisenhower Expressway that passed through Forest Park.
The village has been trying to address the issue by separating combined service lines into separate sewer and water lines – something that mostly happened on block-by-block basis as funding became available. Adding permeable pavers is another part of the strategy. While it ultimately decided not to put in pavers at the village-owned parking lot, Forest Park is applying for the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency funding to help cover the cost of putting them at the village-owned Constitution Court parking lot.