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Originally Posted by pullmanman
Very quick turnaround time for a massive site with environmental concerns. Great news if this goes thru as planned.
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The environmental remediation happened as soon as South Works closed. The place closed in 1992, and IEPA was on USX the whole time. They were not allowed to just leave the site. An NFR letter was issued in 1997.
As I understand it, the bigger challenge is not from toxins in the soil, but all the crap buried down there in layers. Foundations, utilities, etc. It's almost archeological.
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Originally Posted by Via Chicago
tbh this is a reason why im not really seeing how this is "transformational" for the south side that so many seem to be implying. its an isolated office park running a data center. an experimental data center, but nevertheless. i dont see how any implied benefits are going to trickle down to this to surrounding neighborhoods. this is hardly your standard tech company which would be employing thousands of locals. its cool from a science perspective but the impact feels overstated outside of all the contractors who are going to get construction work
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It's a lot of highly-paid, highly-educated people working in an overlooked corner of the city, who will need to live somewhere. Look at the transportation available to the site - both road and transit options are extremely poor to Chicago's favored geography in the north and west suburbs. You can either go north toward downtown and the North Side, or south/east across vast territories of poverty. So these new workers will likely accelerate the growth of the Hyde Park/Woodlawn gentrified cluster and maybe expand it into South Shore.
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan
If we had real leadership in this state/city, they'd be doubling or tripling down on efforts to convince US steel or cleveland-cliffs or some other steel maker to rebuild and reopen a giant steel plant on the site, cuz that seems pretty likely.
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Reminder that the last serious proposal for this portion of South Works (south of 87th) was a factory for Solo Cup. PsyQuantum offers a lot more prestige and opportunities for ripple effects. Leaders would be stupid not to pursue it. It should be pretty clear that there is zero demand at all to build luxury residential for downtown workers here, leaders need to bring jobs first and let the residential demand follow.