Entries associated with the tag "Bensenville":

If you want to see the Dead Zone, better hurry up.

The Dead Zone is, of course, the far northeastern corner of Bensenville, roughly 15 percent of the town. Using immense powers at the state, local and federal levels, Mayor Daley seized control of almost all the property there in order to plow it over and build a new runway and air control tower for O'Hare Airport.

Yesterday DuPage County Judge Kenneth Popejoy gave Daley the green light to begin demolition, ruling that there is no apparent environmental danger from tearing down the property. The city hopes to bring in the bulldozers as soon as possible, says Rosemarie Andolino, who oversees the mayor's O'Hare expansion program.

You might wonder why Mayor Daley would be so eager to proceed with a project for which there is no apparent funding or need, now that rising fuel costs have crippled the airline industry.

Well, I'm totally with Mayor Daley on this one. When I was about eight, I used to like to smash sand castles just for the fund of watching them fall. I mean, what's the fun of being an all-powerful mayor if you can't run people out of their community and demolish their homes?

In his ruling, Popejoy noted that more than 500 buildings in the Dead Zone are vacant and he called them an "eyesore."

I'm going to have to disagree with the judge about this. There's nothing ugly about the Dead Zone. In fact, I find it a little -- oh, what's the word? -- stirring to stand on the quiet streets amidst the boarded-up, vacant houses and contemplate the tremendous political power it represents.

I suggest Judge Popejoy amend his ruling and force Mayor Daley to keep the buildings standing until -- or if -- the city ever has the money it needs to build the stuff it wants to build.

In the meantime, state senator James Meeks should lead bus tours (but not bike rides) of children from Chicago's chronically broke public school system so they can see firsthand how their government spends its money. 

If you want to know why we're on the road to ecological destruction, head on out to Bensenville, only go there by CTA and bike.

I did it yesterday, along with Dave Glowacz, a freelance journalist also known as Mr. Bike. I was taking him to Bensenville to show him the Dead Zone for a segment of an Internet interview show we do together.

In his role as Mr. Bike--and, by the way, this guy has to know more about bicycling around Chicago than anyone alive--he had plotted our route with maps and the Internet.

As he explained it, Bensenville is about six miles directly west from Harlem Avenue along Irving Park Road. To ride there, we had a choice. We could pedal to Union Station, put our bikes on the train, and take Metra to downtown Bensenville. Or we could take the CTA to River Road and bike south around O'Hare Airport, slipping through Schiller Park and into Franklin Park before riding northwest into Bensenville.

I chose the scenic route.

So at about 10:45 in the morning we boarded the Blue Line at Irving and rode to River Road. In the good old days, when Harold Washington was mayor, it would have taken us, oh, I don't know, maybe ten minutes. This time it took us almost 20--I was timing it on a stop watch--because the tracks are falling apart and there are slow zones galore.

We got off at River Road, then biked south to Bryn Mawr, west to Milton Parkway, south to Balmoral and then--well, after that I didn't know where we were. I was just following Mr. Bike, who had the map. It seemed there were construction crews tearing everything up, like they were constantly rebuilding the same parking lot.

We hooked up with Franklin Avenue at its intersection with Scott Street and headed off on the last leg of our journey.

Remind me never to do it again. Franklin was hardly the warm, fuzzy bike-friendly road I foolishly thought it would be. It was like traveling through an industrial hell: a two-lane, potholed road bounded by a gravel-filled shoulder that's really rough on bike tires.

Cars and trucks whizzed by. Jets zoomed over our heads.

"There's got to be a better way to bike from Franklin Park to Bensenville," I gasped.

"This is pretty much it," said Mr. Bike. "Obviously, they weren't thinking of bike riders when they built these suburbs."

We stopped for water at Wolf's, a restaurant at the corner of Wolf and Franklin. The joint was packed with factory workers waiting in line for hot dogs, burgers, and fries. 

Five minutes later, we crossed some railroad tracks and rode into Bensenville.

Ah, Bensenville, glorious Bensenville--it's become my home away from home since I realized that Mayor Daley intended to plow over about 15 percent of it to make way for another one of his Great Ideas, in this case the O'Hare Modernization Program. Before our green mayor is done he will have spent well over $15 billion expanding O'Hare just in time for the collapse of the airline industry. Hey, how's that for planning?

We rode York to Roosevelt and then entered the Dead Zone, passing one boarded-up, abandoned house after another. Not surprising, it was the most bike friendly area we'd passed through all day. I could just imagine what it must have been like before Mayor Daley intruded--little kids riding their tricycles along tree-lined sidewalks and that sort of thing.

Driving by in his car was a grumpy guy from the real-estate management company that has a contract with Chicago to keep an eye on the area. He warned us that we'd better stay on the sidewalks and street because the property belonged to Chicago and we could get a trespassing ticket.

I was going to tell him that I was a taxpaying resident of Chicago so that, you know, technically, the lawns and homes belonged to me. But he didn't look like he was in the mood for conversation.

After about an hour, rain clouds were moving in and we decided to head home. I told Mr. Bike that I'd rather not deal with Franklin, so we took our chances with Irving Park. Man, it was like biking on the interstate--the cars and trucks were pushing sixty. At least it had a pretty decent shoulder to ride along.

At River Road we joined a line of sweaty, anguished-looking travelers getting off the buses from O'Hare. The CTA maps promised them door-to-door service from the airport to the Loop. But, of course, the final leg of the Blue Line is down, while workers repair the tracks.

On the train back to Chicago we sat across the aisle from a lady out of Syracuse, New York, who was in town for a teachers' convention. She said she wanted to make sure her stop in the Loop had an elevator or escalator because she had a bad back and she didn't want to carry her suitcase up the stairs.

Mr. Bike explained that the map on the wall showed which stops had elevators, but there was no way of knowing if these elevators were malfunctioning. It was pretty much a crap shoot.

As the train crawled along, she asked how much time she should give herself if she wanted to take the Blue Line back to O'Hare for her return flight on Monday. "I don't like to take cabs," she said. "But if the service is always like this, you know..."

For no apparent reason, the train stopped just outside Montrose, where we had the pleasant view of the expressway clotted with bumper-to-bumper traffic spewing exhaust.

We got back to Irving Park about 3:30. There's no elevator or escalator so we carried our bikes down the stairs.

There was no exit for bike riders--we obviously couldn't get our bikes through the revolving gate. But a CTA employee was nice enough to unlock another gate to let us out. If he hadn't been there, I don't know what we would have done--probably called the police.

"It's big cars, big airports, big highways," said Mr. Bike. "Just gas `em up `n go."

But, hey, at least we're not Detroit ...

My law enforcement sources up in Bensenville tell me that since I wrote about the Dead Zone last week in the Reader it's has become a tourist hot spot.

Apparently, people are driving through to gawk at the ghost town left in the wake of Mayor Daley's ambitious plan to clear out a chunk of Bensenville and turn it into a piece of O'Hare Airport.

There's a sense of urgency. At the moment lawyers for the city are asking Du Page County circuit court judge Kenneth Popejoy to lift his restraining order that keeps the city from bulldozing the houses it owns in the area.

Using real estate sales tactics straight out of David Mamet, the city pressured folks into selling more 500 pieces of property over the last two years. The city says the land is essential to the O'Hare Modernization Program.

Bensenville's fighting on just about every legal front, including arguing that demolishing the buildings will damage the environment. The city countered by hiring a consultant who's now testifying before Judge Popejoy that the demolition will have a minimal environmental impact.

The hearing ends on Thursday. If Judge Popejoy lifts his injunction, the city can bring in the bulldozers and give the Dead Zone the Meigs Field treatment.  Provided, of course, that Bensenville doesn't win another temporary restraining order with an appeal.

In any event, you should take the opportunity to experience the Dead Zone in all of its eerie ghostliness before it's too late. I think it's more fun -- and a lot more educational -- than a trip to Navy Pier, Millennium Park, or any of Mayor Daley's other tourist attractions.

Stay tuned for my bicycle tour of the area.