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https://www.chicagobusiness.com/greg...moving-forward

GREG HINZ ON POLITICS
September 24, 2020 02:26 PM UPDATED 4 HOURS AGO

Big, green rebuild of North Lake Shore Drive moving forward

The $3 billion project includes beach space and an eye-catching new park, but it still needs funding and is years away from completion.

The cost is huge, upwards of $3 billion, and the funding source is uncertain. But local transportation planners are driving ahead with plans for a splashy, climate-friendly rebuild of North Lake Shore Drive intended to make it more a path through the park than a frenzied expressway.

The centerpiece of the plan, a refined version of a proposal first unveiled three years ago that soon will be the subject of a virtual public hearing, is a much expanded Oak Street Beach that would push farther into Lake Michigan via landfill. That would allow a rebuilt drive to curve at a less steep angle and pave the way for development of a major park behind it to the southwest.

Combined with other landfill south past Chicago Avenue that would replace the stoplight there with an overpass, the lakeshore would gain “a minimum” of 59 new acres of green space from Navy Pier north to the end of the drive at Hollywood Avenue.

“The North Lake Shore Drive project team has reached a critical milestone in the study process as we prepare to recommend a narrowed range of alternatives to be carried forward to the next stage of analysis,” planners from the Chicago and Illinois Departments of Transportation said in releasing new details of where things stand. Further information may come at a briefing scheduled for Sept. 25.