Chicago, Illinois Can’t Play Both Ends Against Middle

The city and state began building from opposite ends and the result--a tunnel that doesn’t meet in the middle--has left the project in a muddle and architects in a huddle.

Already four years behind schedule, the pedway designed to link City Hall with the State of Illinois Center across the street to the north was only a few inches from completion Friday.

Unfortunately, the state’s section is nine inches lower than the city’s and eight inches too far east.

Fingers have been pointed in both directions over who is to blame, but both sides agree that it is going to take $240,000 in changes to put matters on an even keel.

John C. Hill, the city’s coordinating architect on the $2-million project, said the city will probably pick up the tab for the changes, even though he insists that the state is at fault.

Ramp Had to Be Scrapped

The changes will include a new steel-frame skeleton to accommodate a stairway instead of a ramp, and the addition of an elevator stop at City Hall to give the handicapped the same access to the pedway that was lost when the ramp had to be scrapped.

“We planned a 100-foot-long ramp from City Hall into the pedway,” Hill said. “But we had to scrap it because hooking the segments as they sit right now would leave a slope too steep for the state code.

“That meant abandoning a lot of what was there and redoing it. We were both supposed to come in at 22 feet, 4 inches below ground level and somebody didn’t,” Hill said.

That somebody isn’t the state, Capital Development Board spokeswoman Mia Jazo said.

“We don’t want to get into any more finger-pointing,” she said, “but our portion is exactly where it should be.”

The pedway is scheduled to be opened by September. Plans call for it to be linked to an already extensive underground network of downtown buildings and transportation facilities.