Brick by brick the Oak Park Avenue Streetscape creeps towards completion with a projected street re-opening date by Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, local businesses continue to struggle while they wait.
The water, sewer and streetscape project, which began in early March, has been discussed in urgent tones for well over a decade, and faced delays for a start date since 2021. Redeveloping the over 100 year old water and sewer infrastructure was the main task while also sprucing up the above-ground areas.
“People shouldn’t have to think about how their water is delivered and their sewer, where their sewers goes,” said Bill McKenna, Oak Park’s village engineer. “Everything should hopefully work well for our lifetimes.”
Renew the Avenue Project Manager Brian Racine, Sally Prescott with Prescott Group LLC, and McKenna took Wednesday Journal through the area to take a closer look at the project and their “sprint” to the finish line.
McKenna and Racine confirmed that “substantial completion” of the project, streets and sidewalks, will be done by Thanksgiving just at or under a budget of around $18 million. However, some components of the work will continue into the new year such as landscaping that will require spring plantings and pavement markings may need to be touched up as the paint does not stick as well in cold weather.
There is still quite a bit of work to be done to make it to the deadline such as finishing electrical work for light poles and traffic signals, irrigation, cement work, and one of the village’s most anticipated new features, two large art instillations.
Crews have recently been, and will continue, to work on weekends to get the work done on time and make sure the different groups of workers can plan around each other since many different pieces are being completed all on top of each other in what Racine called a “well-orchestrated dance.”
Although people strolling the avenue may only see the half-done brick laid street and caution tape above ground, Racine said a lot of the work completed happened underground and out-of-sight.
“There’s a lot of stuff going on below our feet that people tend to not think about, and that takes time and money,” said Racine.
As residents anxiously await the re-opening, many nearby businesses are just barely holding on.
In May, George Konstantos of George’s Family Restaurant, reported that business was down about 30% because of construction. Three months later, he said business is still down the same amount, some days dropping closer to 50%, a low he has not reached since the pandemic. One of his only beacons of hope through the past year was the community support to help keep the business running.
“I grew up with this place, so it means a lot to me,” said Konstantos. “I don’t want to just close it and walk away. It would have killed me,” he said of the restaurant at 145 S. Oak Park Ave.
Konstantos said he has been “frustrated” with the village throughout the process with a lack of financial support and parking struggles for people trying to get to the businesses.
The village offered grant programs for businesses, but only to upgrade exteriors, interior spaces and to assist with social media marketing.
Just a couple of doors down, Grape Leaves manager Estefania Berroteran echoed Konstantos’ struggles. Berroteran said it has been especially hard on older customers because of longer walking distances and difficulty navigating the sidewalks. She said she saw a couple of people fall just outside of the restaurant.
The Moroccan restaurant was supposed to move into a larger space next door to their current location, but the relocation has been postponed and some staff has been let go because of the financial struggles. She said the goal is to move to the larger space as soon as the avenue is open again. Grape Leaves current location is at 129 S. Oak Park Ave.
“We’re just trying to be optimistic about it overall,” said Berroteran. “It’s looking great now and we’re glad that at least people can walk through, and we definitely noticed the change because our other regular customers, older customers coming in which was something that was a little bit more important for us, but we just hope that they finish on time and that we can move forward with advertising how nice it looks outside.”
There will be an early celebration for the Hemingway District before the official opening with a “block party” on Nov. 14 called “On the Road Again” from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.