My name is Josh Hinterlong and I am a proud resident of Oak Park. I live about a block and a half north of the Eisenhower Expressway on the 700 block of Clarence Avenue.
As everyone knows, the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) has been working on the redesign of the Eisenhower Expressway for a long time and pretty much everyone is on board with the expansion of the thoroughfare. That is not the issue.
The issue that has just come to our attention is that IDOT has just proposed a 15- to 20-foot-tall sound wall that will run the length of Oak Park through mainly residential neighborhoods. This sound wall had not been on any other previous proposals and even took members of the Oak Park Design Commission and the Village Plan Commission by surprise.
Now the IDOT is calling for a vote on the sound wall; however, they are only polling homeowners and renters (another issue since renters do not have a permanent stake in the outcome) who live within a block of the Eisenhower even though a two-story wall would obviously effect residents well past that one block. It also doesn’t make sense to build the sound wall where there are no exit ramps, considering the Eisenhower is already about 20 feet below grade all the way through Oak Park which creates an effective sound barrier.
In addition, a large sound wall would effectively divide Oak Park at the Eisenhower and take away the direct sight lines currently available across the thoroughfare, which for me personally includes Rehm Park and the newly refurbished Oak Park Conservatory — not to mention that concrete barriers such as this sound wall are graffiti magnets and no matter how nice they look initially, they will crumble and become an eyesore, both of which will hurt homeowners’ property values even more than just the sound wall itself.
I have spoken with many of my neighbors and everyone agrees that this sound wall is a very bad idea and, unfortunately, it seems that the majority of those who are effected will not have a voice in the decision.
In reality, what this sound wall really seems to be is an attempt by IDOT to procure more federal funds for the Eisenhower project even though the wall is completely unnecessary and would be a blight on our community.
Josh Hinterlong
Oak Park