In September the trucks started rumbling down the tree-lined side streets of Old Irving Park to dump their asphalt in the abandoned railroad yards near Kolmar and Berteau.
The site at Berteau and Kolmar is part of an old industrial corridor just west of the Kennedy Expressway. In the last few years several of the companies around there moved to the suburbs, and the surrounding residential neighborhood has flourished. “This neighborhood is one of the most stable in the city, and we work hard to keep it that way,” says Linda Pudlo, a longtime resident of the area. “In fact, just this year the Park District agreed to spend $45,000 to fix up the park on Kolmar and Berteau. We had heard rumors about the plant. But we figured no way would the city be stupid enough to put an asphalt plant in a residential neighborhood across the street from a park.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Now Nielsen and her neighbors were perplexed as well as worried. What planned development was Grady talking about? As far as they knew, Palumbo had not yet officially revealed its plans. “We had to ask ourselves: did the city know something they were keeping from us?” says Nielsen. “Was there some sort of giant conspiracy going on? We knew nothing because the city wasn’t telling us anything.”
The matter is made even more confusing because it’s not absolutely clear which ward the railroad yard is in. According to the current ward map, which the City Council adopted last year, it’s in Alderman Tom Cullerton’s 38th Ward; according to the old ward map, it’s in the 45th Ward. “I’m not taking a stand on this because it’s not in my ward,” says Levar. “It’s in Cullerton’s ward. I am not going into another ward and telling another alderman what to do. I have a list of polling places from the Board of Election Commissioners telling me that this site is in Cullerton’s ward.” But Pudlo and Nielsen have a letter from Michael Hamblet, chairman of the Board of Election Commissioners, stating that “until May 1995, old ward boundaries will be utilized by various departments with the city of Chicago to provide services for their constituents because the Aldermen were originally elected from the old wards.” Daley administration officials concur that the new ward boundaries will not take effect until after the aldermanic elections of 1995.
