For decades, whenever I encountered people elsewhere in the city, they inevitably would ask me where I was from? “The 10th Ward? Where’s that?” Or, “Oh ... you live down there?”
Sigh. Yes, I live “down there.” Or rather, I did. I was born and raised in the 10th Ward and lived there for 56 years.
To help them out, I would invariably refer to the area’s steel mills, although that sometimes still didn’t bridge the gap between us. And while the 10th Ward was known for its steel mills, I also considered it to be a maritime ward.
The Calumet River wends it way through the ward from Lake Michigan to Lake Calumet, and river traffic (iron ore carriers, barges, and freighters), either to the mills or to the Port of Chicago at the tip of Lake Calumet, was deemed to be a measure of the economy, locally and at large. A balky bridge across the river, however, or one out of service, represented at best a headache, or worse, a nightmare.
Recently, we saw the news about a federal grant that the city received to rehabilitate the four bridges across the Calumet River, at 92nd, 95th, 100th, and 106th streets. The funds, $144 million, are a part of the national $1.2 trillion infrastructure package passed by Congress and touted by the Biden administration.
Vice President Kamala Harris — accompanied by Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Sen. Dick Durbin, and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle — announced the good news — and it is good news! — at a ceremony at the 95th Street bridge.
But at the risk of sounding like a skeptic — or worse, a cynic — I’d like to pose a few questions about this much-needed project.
Is the grant money in question dedicated exclusively for this project, or will bits and pieces be sloughed off to pay for other things? Worse, will monies be drained away by bureaucracy, incompetence or corruption? After all, it’s Chicago.
The words “rehab,” “rehabilitation” and “rehabilitating” are used in the Sun-Times story, the last in a quote from Lightfoot. But what does that mean? A complete overhaul of the gears and lifting mechanisms — the guts — or just superficial work on each bridge? Some scraping and welding, and then some primer and gray paint? That kind of slap-dash repair work has been done on those bridges for as long as I can remember.
How will the project proceed? Will each bridge in turn be shut down completely, or just lane by lane? If the former, don’t shut down more than one bridge at a time! The 10th Ward, a geo-political island, has always been cut off, to some extent, from the rest of the city. Please don’t make it worse.
If lane by lane, that has been done before, especially in regards to the 92nd Street bridge, resulting in traffic bottlenecks, delayed commutes and missed connections to Metra and the CTA. Whichever approach is taken, plan well. And then plan again.
Lightfoot has touted the project as a substantial jobs creator. But who will award those all-important contracts, the federal government or City Hall? And how many of the mayor’s “jobs, jobs, jobs,” will go to the residents of the Southeast Side, and the 10th Ward in particular?
Overhauling the bridges across the Calumet River will allow, hopefully, residents of the area to commute to work, school and the city at large with increased ease. First responders will be able to enter and service the ward without egregious detours or delays. Commercial traffic, both on land and the river, should also see a boost, to the economic benefit of the neighborhoods, the city and the region. Hopefully.
But do the politicos who were in attendance that day truly understand the importance of this project for “down there”? They appeared, they proclaimed, they left.
I just hope they didn’t get stuck in traffic due to a balky bridge. I know Harris wasn’t inconvenienced, as Calumet Fisheries, where she picked up lunch, is on the other side of the 95th Street bridge. Bon appetit!
John Vukmirovich is a Chicago-area writer and book reviewer. His essay, “Loren Eiseley, The Hidden Teacher,” on the American anthropologist, recently appeared in Catamaran Literary Reader.
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