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Old Posted Sep 3, 2009, 3:56 AM
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ardecila ardecila is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: the city o'wind
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Morgan/Lake Station

Lake Street remake
Morgan el project gets federal help, intersection to be cleared of columns
09/02/2009 10:00 PM
By MICAH MAIDENBERG




A new el station in the West Loop is getting some help from the ultimate infrastructure funder: Uncle Sam.

The City of Chicago will use $8 million in federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality funds to help pay for the planned Morgan and Lake station, which would serve riders on the Green and Pink lines.

Originally, the city assumed dollars from the Kinzie Industrial Tax Increment Financing District would pay for the entirety of the project, according to Brian Steele, a spokesman for the Chicago Department of Transportation.

But then the city learned in the late spring the Morgan Street station project was awarded the federal grant. The news delayed finding a contractor to build the station, but Steele said the pause was well worth it.

In all, $36 million has been secured thus far for the station.

Bids for the project will be opened Sept. 24. Work could start within 60 to 90 days of when the contract is awarded — possibly late this year, Steele said. Initially, the chosen contractor would procure equipment and relocate utilities, with actual construction eyed for 2010.

Bids have been opened for a project that would move support columns for the Green and Pink line out of the Lake and Ogden intersection. Work is expected to start in October and be finished by 2011.

“It will be somewhat similar to the reconstruction of Wacker Drive during 2001 and 2002, when we replaced column structures at Wells and Wacker,” Steele said. “There will still be column supports, but instead of them being on the roadway, they’ll be in the sidewalk area.”

The el stop and column removal projects are expected to be carried out simultaneously.

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Hopefully the column relocation project will give us another cool truss structure. The one on Wacker is massive, and something similar would look dynamite at Lake/Ogden.
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