The City Council put a resolution on the table Wednesday asking Amtrak to stop and show its work. Specifically: pause the railyard project until the full environmental studies are public. Our neighbors in Bridgeport and Chinatown have been saying this at meetings for a month, and now it is on paper downtown.
Here is the part that is ours. Amtrak wants to move its Chicago maintenance and inspection work out of the 14th Street Coach Yard, the one you walk over on the Roosevelt bridge, and down to the Canal Street Yard at 436 W. 25th Place. Fifty-seven acres, Cermak down to 38th, Canal to Stewart. The feds put up to $572 million behind it in August, plus $87 million for viaducts, and the target is 2028. The environmental sign-off was a categorical exclusion, which is the light-touch version, and that is exactly the thing the alders are poking at.
The developer is Canal Edge, which is Justin Ishbia's firm. Ishbia has already published renderings for a White Sox ballpark on the land the 14th Street yard sits on today.
So: the biggest open question about what the Sloop looks like in 2035 is currently being argued three miles south of us. What do you want on that yard?
Source credit: WTTW, with project details from Amtrak's own Midwest Maintenance Facility site and additional reporting from Chronicle Media. Crain's Chicago Business and Block Club Chicago also covered the resolution.
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