No Route 53 extension? How about a greenway in Chicago’s northern suburbs?
Since highway planners began touting it in the 1960s, the prospect of a new thoroughfare has hovered over a long swath of real estate in Chicago’s northern suburbs. Now, though, with the Route 53 extension doornail-dead, what will become of 1,100 choice acres that Illinois officials acquired for the right of way?
That straightforward question addresses this moment of extraordinary opportunity: It’s borderline unthinkable that the long stretch from Lake Cook Road deep into Lake County remains largely undeveloped.
It’s also a question that resonates south of Chicago: When state and regional officials finally acknowledge that abundant cargo capacity at Gary, Rockford and other airfields means a major new airport never will be built at Peotone, what will become of that set-aside land?
Some Illinois lawmakers understand that how Illinois disposes of its Route 53 real estate will create a precedent for deliberations over Peotone, and perhaps for other surplus state landholdings. The Illinois General Assembly has adopted a resolution calling for a task force to study alternate uses for the Route 53 corridor, with a report due by the end of 2022.
Stop right there: Seventeen months for yet another government panel to produce yet another government study of this government-controlled corridor — the object of so many previous studies? The smart recommendation for the land is pretty obvious. That key decision ought to take no more than, say, 17 minutes:
The Tribune recently reported that an alliance of conservationists and elected officials in Lake County are pushing to turn the proposed tollway corridor into a greenway — a trail through a long, narrow nature preserve.
That term, greenway, means different things to different people. Yet this route is long enough to accommodate multiple uses — forest preserve, wildlife habitat, wetlands, maybe with abutting park or recreational space — while keeping the entire resource as close to pristine as
Stop right there: Seventeen months for yet another government panel to produce yet another government study of this government-controlled corridor — the object of so many previous studies?
possible.
To briefly review why this thin package of property parcels remains mostly available for natural uses:
Two years ago, in July 2019, we applauded the Illinois Tollway’s abandonment of the $2.65 billion project. Various iterations included various lengths of a highway extension; the proposal then in play ran 25 miles, roughly from Arlington Heights to Grayslake.
As concerns about suburban sprawl made the idea of a busy new highway less appealing, support for the extension dimmed. In 2017 the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a consumer advocacy outfit, had included the project on its list of the country’s most wasteful roadway boondoggles. And in October 2018 the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, the entity that adjudicates which transportation projects get whatever federal funding is available, had dropped the Route 53 extension from its priority list.
Yet Tollway officials foolishly had spent about $13 million of a planned $50 million on an environmental study of their roadway going nowhere. We proposed that the Tollway Authority adopt a simple policy statement: If CMAP is downgrading this idea, we’re finished spending money on it.
Lo and behold, the Tollway agreed to stop squandering money on the project. The Tribune reports that a different agency, the Illinois Department of Transportation, has spent $54 million to acquire the 1,100 acres now in question. We await the details of who can dedicate this land to natural uses, and under whose stewardship.
We hope Springfield lawmakers, present and future governors included, won’t follow the do-little pace that for six decades sustained talk of this project.
As for Peotone: The sooner public officials in Springfield and in Chicago’s southern exurbs admit the folly of the Peotone project, the sooner that land, too, can be sold for farmland or dedicated to other uses.