Congress Parkway panned for not meeting city's needs
Chicago residents discuss road's function in development of South Loop

Andrew J. Scott/The Chronicle Chris Hall, member of Friends of Downtown’s board of directors, presents his ideas for improvements along Congress Parkway. Hall is also the project manager for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, the design firm that designed the Sears Tower.

By Chris Coates
Editor-in-Chief

Hala Megahy tries to cross one of the most dangerous intersections in Chicago at least a half-dozen times every day.
It’s not always easy.

“I can never cross Congress,” said Megahy, a sophomore marketing communications major living in Columbia’s 18 E. Congress Parkway Building for the past two years. With turning cars, stopped buses and blocked taxicabs, the congested intersection of Congress and South Wabash Avenue sees hundreds of pedestrians like Megahy and thousands of vehicles every day.

It also sees a handful of near-miss accidents—Congress Parkway at Wabash Avenue is ranked in the top 30 of the most hazardous intersections in Chicago, according to the most recent data released by the city’s Department of Transportation.

Pedestrians heading south and north on Wabash Avenue have less than 20 seconds to cross the 66-foot wide stretch—those who can’t, find themselves stranded on a narrow cement meridian in the middle of the six-lane thoroughfare. Underneath the el tracks, there are no walk lights and no turn lanes.

And while Congress’ role as highway terminus and pedestrian walkway are apparent, some South Loop residents, business owners and community leaders say the roadway’s psychological role plays an even larger part. Critics say Congress is a separation line between Chicago’s business center and the residents of Printers’ Row. They say it lacks a defining streetscape; its buildings are characterless; and its transit entrances are obscured.

“For me, it’s clearly a dividing point,” said Charles Middleton, president of Roosevelt University, at an April 21 meeting of Friends of Downtown. In recent years, the nonprofit community group has moved to scrutinize the role of Congress Parkway on the community, the area and the city.

The meeting, inside the Burnham Room of the Hyatt on Printers’ Row at 500 S. Dearborn St., was the culmination of more than 10 months of design for the “Vision of Congress Parkway,” a 19-page summary of suggestions from the community addressing to what’s wrong with the current Congress Parkway.

The event featured a discussion between panelists Dr. Brent Ryan, co-director of the Great Cities Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago; Benet Haller, a Financial Planning Analyst in the city’s Planning and Development Department; Janet Attarian, Project Director for the CDOT’s Streetscape Program; and Middleton.

“Congress is in my life everyday,” said Middleton, who has lived in the South Loop since he was named Roosevelt’s president a years ago.

With the university sitting alongside Congress Parkway, Middleton said his main concern was the safety of his students who, like Columbia’s, have to traverse the six-lane parkway to get to class.

No Columbia official was on the panel. Middleton said the safety concern would be amplified with the completion of the University Center of Chicago, a joint venture between Roosevelt, DePaul University and Columbia. When the 18-story structure is completed in August, it will house 2,000 students on the corner of Congress and South State Street.

The sudden increase of students marks the changing role of Congress Parkway—once a grand civic gateway turned expressway terminus turned educational corridor.

For South Loop residents, Congress is the end of their neighborhood. Like many of the issues facing residents in the newly rehabbed warehouses of Printers’ Row and the condominiums of the South Loop, the question is how what was once commercial can somehow become residential.

“This isn’t a typical community area,” said Attarian, who is in charge of the road’s streetscape. “I’m the one who’s going to solve these problems.”

Those problems, at least according to those at the meeting, are mounting.

“Congress is a sad and desolate street,” said Ryan, calling Congress Parkway “a sewer of automobiles.” He said Congress Parkway was a poorly hatched concepts in the 1909 Plan of Chicago, designed by Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett.

The plan—which also advocated the creation of what would eventually become Wacker Drive—has been widely interpreted by city officials and designers. Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley cited the plan in last year’s condemnation of Meigs Field, which was originally sketched as a lakefront park.

In the plan, Burnham and Bennett envisioned Congress Parkway as the central spine of the city. With pedestrian-friendly streets and access to railroad terminals, the then-narrow street was envisioned as a grand entranceway into Grant Park, hence its “parkway” designation.

Until the 1950s, the South Side Rail Line terminated at a stop above Congress Parkway in the alley that now separates the University Center of Chicago and Columbia’s 33 E. Congress Parkway Building.

The rail line was built in 1892 in part to facilitate the thousands of tourists heading to the Columbian World’s Exposition, which also was partially designed by Burnham and serves as Columbia’s namesake.

But with the construction of the Interstate Highway 290 in the 1950s and its terminus into Congress, engineers were faced with carving out for an expanded Congress Parkway, which included demolishing certain buildings.

Such demolitions account for the unusual nature of end cap lots at certain intersections—such as the B.P. Gas Station at Congress and Dearborn Street and the parking lot on the southeast corner of Congress and Plymouth Court.

In the case of existing structures, engineers were faced with eliminating sidewalks on the formerly pedestrian friendly street to capitalize on all of the available space. The solution was to carve out the first floor of some existing buildings to enable arcade-style sidewalks.

Examples of such treatment include the Louis Sullivan’s historic Auditorium Theater at 430 S. Michigan Ave., the Congress Hotel and Convention Center at 520 S. Michigan Ave. and Columbia’s 33 E. Congress Parkway Building.

The result was a dampening down of the street’s pedestrian access and a mish mash of building styles and facades.

Dennis McClendon, one of the board of directors of Friends of Downtown, said the relatively new age of the street means it’s experiencing an “ungainly adolescence.”

“I don’t have to stand up here and tell you Congress Parkway was underutilized as a civic gateway,” said President Brad H. Winick, who served as an emcee for the event. Winick said he hoped the event “symbolizes the handoff” from the advisory council to the city.

Suggestions include pragmatic solutions—such as clearer signage indicating the freeway’s end—to admittedly grandiose plans such as turning the shuttered Old Post Office into a regional transportation hub complete with heliport pad for trips to Evanston, Ill.

Others solutions include improving access to and identification of two of the Chicago Transit Authority’s Blue Line stops—the LaSalle Street station and the Clinton Street station, which actually sits below the overpass of the I-290 expressway.

The suggestions are similar to those contained within the Near South Plan, a multifaceted sketch of the needed improvements in the quickly changing South Loop. Haller also worked on the plan.

Attarian said the streetscape plans are already in place, with funding allotted within the next 18 months.

As The Chronicle reported April 12, the city’s Department of Planning is set to renovate the street’s dozon crossings, including repainting walkway lines and reconstructing meridians.

Middleton said he’d like to see push-buttons on the corner that enable pedestrians to stop traffic, akin to those on Lake Shore Drive next to Grant Park.

Karrie Sommers, Columbia’s director of marketing and an attendee of the meeting, seconded Middleton’s concern with student safety.

“It’s a terrible intersection,” she said.

With plan in hand, officials from Friends of Downtown said they’re looking to work with the city to see their suggestions become a reality. They have no timetable.

“Some places in fact, Congress is a sieve … allowing people just go through and in other places it’s a boundary,” Haller said. “I think we can celebrate that.”

As for Megahy, her days of traversing Congress Parkway may be over: She’s planning to move into an apartment next year.

“I won’t cross,” Megahy said, “unless I know I can make it across.”