Two projects that could change the economic face of Chicago — the CTA’s $5.3 billion Red Line extension and a multi-billion-dollar quantum computing campus on the Far South Side — got final zoning approval Wednesday as the City Council teed up Mayor Brandon Johnson’s 2025 budget for a nail-biting final vote on Friday.
One day after the mayor’s $17.3 billion budget and the $256 million in fines and fees to support it squeaked through the Budget and Finance committees, the full Council deferred and published both ordinances, setting the stage for Friday.
If the Council approves the budget package, it would beat a Dec. 31 deadline to avoid a government shutdown. But Johnson could be forced to cast a tie-breaking vote — the third of his 19-month tenure. That’s how touch-and-go the negotiations have been, even after the $300 million property tax increase Johnson originally proposed was reduced to $68.5 million.
Wednesday’s meeting was the legislative calm before the storm, but it still wasn’t all smooth sailing.
The City Council chambers were evacuated for nearly two hours by a electrical fire on the Cook County side of the building.
When members returned, Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) briefly threatened to block the entire Zoning Committee agenda from being voted on by the Council. That’s because that report did not include the committee’s rejection of Sterling Bay’s plan to build a pair of residential buldings in Lincoln Park. Waguespack opposes the project because of concerns about the height of the buildings, the lack of parking, and the traffic the project would create.
Waguespack ultimately agreed to withdraw his roadblock and keep working on the project, which Johnson supports.
That allowed the Council to do its part to turn the 50-year-old dream of extending the Red Line into reality by rezoning dozens of properties along the proposed 5.6-mile route — property the CTA has or will acquire for track alignment, four stations, a sub-station and a rail yard. The Red Line now ends at 95th Street; the extension would run south to 130th Street.
The CTA is in line to receive a nearly $2 billion federal grant, the largest in its history, to cover half the cost of the extension. The project would provide CTA rail service to the only part of Chicago without it.
Looking south from 95th Street at the end of the Red Line. The city plans to extend the Red Line to 130th Street, but has not yet secured all the federal funds it needs, and that money could be at risk in a second Trump administration.
But embattled CTA President Dorval Carter Jr. still hasn’t secured the full-funding agreement needed to lock down federal funding for the extension, even after disclosing in August that the project’s overall cost has ballooned from $3.6 billion to $5.3 billion.
Without it, there are concerns the federal spigot could run dry after Donald Trump becomes president.
The CTA still hopes to nail down that full-funding agreement before President Joe Biden leaves office Jan. 20.
“I don’t know if it’ll be before the holidays. It could be after the holidays,” CTA spokesperson Catherine Hosinski said Wednesday.
In 2016, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel moved heaven and earth to nail down $1.1 billion in federal grants to modernize a stretch of the Red Line on the North Side before then-President Barack Obama left the White House. Emanuel convinced the Council to authorize a transit tax increment financing district to provide the local matching funds and signed the ordinance on the final day for the city to demonstrate its commitment.
Computer project gitches
The rezoning that will convert more than 400 acres of land at a long-shuttered U.S. Steel facility into a new quantum computing campus has had its own share of controversy.
Residents of a Southeast Side area that has long been Chicago’s favorite dumping ground have raised environmental issues and urged city and state officials to slow down development to give them time to nail down a community benefits agreement.
California-based PsiQuantum plans to build the world’s first commercially useful quantum computer at a massive site that has eluded development since U.S. Steel closed the South Works in 1992.
It will anchor the 128-acre Illinois Quantum & Microelectronics Park, which could be home to other technology and innovation companies. Developer Related Midwest said it’s talking to a “major” employer for the north end of the site, separate from the campus.
The 440-acre development will be completed in phases over the next four to six years.
Quantum computing creates infinite combinations of the binary bits used by computers to calculate larger and more complex problems. It could lead to the manufacturing of new medications and make sensitive data almost impermeable to hacking, among other possibilities touted by experts — but many of those possibilities are yet to be realized.