In the News

Pioneer Press, August 24, 2006

Business owners and residents fear long latent state plans to reconstruct the intersection of Milwaukee and West Lake avenues might be moving forward.

About 40 merchants and homeowners met Aug. 14 with state Rep. Elaine Nekritz, D-57th, and state Sen. Susan Garrett, D-29th, to try to find out the project's status.

"Nobody knows exactly what's going on," said Tony Tzoubris, manager of his family's Captain's Quarters restaurant at 3566 Milwaukee Ave. "We need to all get on the same page."

To that end, Nekritz said she and Garrett would set up a meeting in September with Illinois Department of Transportation, Cook County Highway Department and Glenview officials to get answers.

"What we heard loud and clear (Aug. 14) was that there was a lot of conflicting information," Nekritz said. "We want to try to get representatives from all the agencies and governments in the same place."

Plans to widen Milwaukee from Sanders Road to West Lake Avenue, which is known as Euclid farther west, have been put on and pulled off the drawing board for at least the last 15 years.

In the early 1990s, the state wanted to upgrade Milwaukee so it could serve as a strategic regional arterial.

The original plan to widen the roadway from four lanes to six lanes through Glenview was pared. The widening then was planned to be confined to intersections that included both streets.

The last public discussion of the intersection was at an October 2002 hearing, where state officials presented their plans to reconstruct Milwaukee from south of Willow Road to south of West Lake Avenue.

Since then, Illinois State Toll Highway Authority officials have pondered widening the Tri-State Tollway from Dempster Street to the Wisconsin state line. Widening the 4.5-mile stretch of tollway between Balmoral Avenue and Dempster Street is scheduled to begin this fall.

A nearly $9.6 million proposal to improve and reconstruct the Milwaukee and West Lake avenues intersection is listed in the state transportation department's highway improvement program for 2008 through 2012.

But Nekritz said she isn't sure if the state will commit funds for it.

"One of the messages I wanted to deliver (Aug. 14) was I think something will happen but I can't tell you when. I don't even think IDOT can say when," she said.

In the meantime, Tzoubris said, area business owners can't plan ahead.

"As a business owner, how do you set a business plan if next year they have the money and can start this project right away? We'd like to reinvest in our business but every year you wonder when the hammer is going to drop."

Tzoubris and other business owners don't believe there is enough traffic going through the West Lake and Milwaukee intersection to justify a major construction project that would tear it up for three years.

"We're independent businesses trying to make a living and this would devastate all of us," he said.

"If I'm having all this trouble trying to find out what's going on, then if we get everybody together, we'll have a better shot," he added.