Oak Park is looking to break ground next week on an infrastructure project 15 years in the making.
Construction on the “Renew The Avenue” Oak Park Avenue streetscaping project is scheduled to begin Monday, Jan. 19, but temperatures projected to drop to near 0 degrees Fahrenheit could push the groundbreaking to later in the week, project leaders told Wednesday Journal.
The largescale project is set to remake the streetscape by adding art installations, curb bump outs and other above ground improvements while overhauling the century-old water and sewer systems that run underneath Oak Park Avenue between Ontario Street and Randolph Street through the village’s Hemingway Business District.
The project is scheduled to be mostly completed by Thanksgiving 2026 so that regular traffic through the district can resume before this year’s holiday season.
ALamp Concrete Contractors is overseeing the project. The firm also oversaw the village’s recent Madison Street streetscaping effort, delivering that project “on-time and under budget,” according to Village Engineer Bill McKenna.
The construction crews will take a “layer cake” approach to the project, starting with the underground water and sewer work and finishing with the above ground improvements, Renew The Avenue’s Project Manager Brian Racine said.
“They want to get started with that deeper excavation right away,” said Racine, who also served as project manager for Oak Park’s Lake Street streetscaping project in 2020. “The contractor realizes that they have a lot to do, and the village has some key milestones for the project. They have the Thanksgiving deadline for significant completion on the project,” he said.
Work on all the sewer and water installations is expected to be completed by early May. The first phase of construction will center around the installation of a new sewer main from Randolph Street to Pleasant Street and new sewer and water mains from Lake Street to Ontario Street.
Once work begins, the village will begin diverting most traffic on Oak Park Avenue at Chicago Avenue to the north of the business district and at Madison Street to its south. The detours are set to eliminate through traffic on the roadway during construction, but the village will provide local detours throughout the building process so residents and visitors can still reach the business district.
The village will keep road access open to the Avenue Parking Garage at 720 North Blvd. throughout construction, where residents and visitors will be able to park for free for 90 minutes while the work is going on. Pedestrian access to all the businesses in the district will also be preserved at all times, project leaders said.
Trucks will be detoured to Harlem Avenue and Pace Bus service will also be detoured during the construction.
The village also plans to sponsor grant opportunities to local businesses impacted by the construction.
Completing the Oak Park Avenue streetscaping project has been a goal for the village since 2011 but has been delayed several times in recent years. The streetscaping work had been planned to start in 2021 but was delayed to give businesses in the area time to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
After that delay, work on the project had been planned to begin last year but was pushed back again after the village only received a project bid from one construction firm, whose bid came in nearly $5 million above the project’s $18 million budget, according to McKenna.
In the months following that delay, the village cut over $300,000 from the project by doing away with plans for custom fencing, special lighting and granite sidewalk pavers in the corridor. Putting the project out for bid in the fall was also a major factor in getting lower bids for the work than the village did the year before, as it gave contractors an opportunity to place bids before having most of their construction season work schedules put in place, McKenna said.
Staff also saved nearly $800,000 through other “miscellaneous adjustments” and by procuring materials that would’ve been more costly to pay contractors to obtain.
Oak Park’s village board cut the project’s budget even more in August, asking staff to use a cheaper material to pave new sidewalks. Instead of using Bluestone for the new sidewalks, the village will use concrete pavers that brought the overall cost of the project down by nearly $1 million.
In August, Village President Vicki Scaman thanked McKenna and his team for revising the plan.
“I commend you for the work that you did to bring that to us and cutting some of those luxury items potentially, but also items that down the road that we can always add, she said. “Some of the things that are important to me about this project is that eventually we see this district really thriving, and there are some great businesses there already that have high energy, hosting events, increasing tourism, but some locations have been vacant for some time.”
