A group of Chicago Public Schools graduates who visited a still-under-construction station on the CTA’s Green Line last week couldn’t board any trains there just yet, but their tour guides hoped they would still be able to see how an engineering career could take them places.
The students were graduates of George Westinghouse College Prep, where they participated in the school’s Paschen Engineering Scholars program. They visited the site of a nearly $70 million Green Line station project that’s called for everything from civil and electrical engineering to architectural design.
“A lot of people think that it’s all just hard hats and hammers,” said Alan Osinski, assistant vice president for F.H. Paschen, the company overseeing the project, who was there for the tour. “But there’s a whole professional side with modeling and design.”
The Chicago-based construction company has sponsored the engineering program at the West Side school since 2015. Scholars have special engineering courses during the academic year and internships at the company during the summers.
Paid internships are available to scholars in college. This year, for the first time, they’re available for scholars between high school and college.
The scholars started the tour by visiting a company office a few blocks north of the Lake Street and Damen Avenue construction site, where they were met by local Ald. Walter Burnett (27th), who said he’s been pushing to add the Damen L stop for at least a decade.
At the office, they heard an overview of the project’s architectural design, which Paschen scholar Akyla Woods paid special attention to. She plans to study architecture this upcoming school year at Howard University.
Woods, 17, became interested in architecture after becoming disillusioned with computer engineering. She realized she could use her talent for drawing instead.
The Oak Park resident also said architecture was more meaningful for her personally.
“I have a goal of building an upscale homeless shelter, based on personal experience I had with my family growing up,” she said. “I knew that if I wanted to have that, I’d have to learn how to build buildings.”
The 5,000-square-foot station was designed by local firm Perkins & Will. It will include a mural, escalators, a wood ceiling, elevators on both sides of the platform and a pedestrian walkway built with green glass. Work is expected to finish around April 2024.
For Aidan Avilas, who plans to study civil engineering at Northeastern Illinois University, the tour was a chance to meet people he might work with one day.
He talked with one of the site superintendents, Tony Spizzirri, who transitioned into the role of overseeing construction from a desk job.
“Truth is, supers are a dying breed in this industry,” Spizzirri said, adding that all Avilas would have to do is express an interest in the job.
The 18-year-old imagined it could be a good fit following his studies. “I like being outside,” he said. “My strong suit is working with my hands.”
Spizzirri said the first part of the project was removing the foundation from an old station that once stood at the same site but was closed in 1948.
The Henry Horner Homes public housing complex used to be nearby, and a 12-story, 96-unit Westhaven Park development for affordable housing now is planned for the former Horner site. To Burnett, that makes adding the Damen station a “social justice issue.”
Touring the site, he wondered aloud if there weren’t more jobs available for locals on the project.
“Everybody fulfills their [diversity] requirements but not necessarily with people from the neighborhood,” said Burnett, who grew up in the Cabrini-Green public housing complex. “I’d hate for my people to see people working and they’re not the ones working.”
Osinski said there were no upcoming job fairs for the site, but the firm hoped to develop local talent through the scholars program at Westinghouse.
“Generally, there’s a slowdown in the construction industry in professional service,” he said. “There’s going to be a shortage eventually, so we’re trying to get ahead to bridge that gap.”
Michael Loria is a staff reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South Side and West Side.
