To combat crime, Reilly pushing 'order' to close Ohio Street underpass - Chicago Sun-Times

Downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) will try Monday to persuade his colleagues to “order” the Chicago Park District to close the Ohio Street underpass between midnight and 5 a.m. during warm weather months.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel sounded none too excited about the controversial idea, telling reporters last week he was determined to “make sure every part of the city has access” to the Chicago’s lakefront.

“We’re gonna also work with aldermen to make sure that their neighborhoods are safe. We’ll figure out a way to do it. I know you want a yes or no, but that’s not that simple,” the mayor said when asked whether he would go along with the underpass closing.

Undeterred by the mayor’s ambivalence, Reilly is asking the City Council’s Finance Committee Monday to approve an “order directing” Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld and Park District Superintendent Mike Kelley to “eliminate access at the Ohio Street/Lake Shore Drive underpass during certain nighttime hours.”

The order was introduced directly to the Finance Committee — not to the full Council, where it would be referred to committee. Introducing something directly to a committee is a method normally reserved for emergency measures.

Reilly said he understands that Emanuel “doesn’t have a strong opinion” about closing the underpass between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m. But, he argued that “my Streeterville constituents have had very strong opinions about the safety of this pedestrian underpass overnight” and he shares those concerns.

“I believe this move will help stretch limited police resources further and help enhance safety along the Lakefront overnight for residents & visitors alike,” Reilly wrote in an email.

“If locking the gate doesn’t prove to be effective or raises other issues, the City Council can always repeal this order.”

Reilly noted that it’s not the first time he has forged ahead on infrastructure decisions—whether to “change it, improve it, remove it, secure it”–without consulting the mayor.

“To address drag racing on Lower Wacker last summer, I used aldermanic menu money to close-off access points, narrow intersections and change lanes of traffic. Those were decisions I made on my own, without engaging Mayor Emanuel,” he said.

“I’ve used menu money to gate-off nooks in city superstructure that regularly attracted vandalism or harbored drug activity – again a decision I made in my role as alderman, without consulting the Mayor.”

It was near the Ohio Street underpass in the 500 block of East Ohio that 25-year-old Raven Lemons was shot in the head and killed about 2 a.m. on June 18.

In an email to the Chicago Sun-Times last week that followed the newspaper’s critical editorial, Reilly offered an impassioned defense of the underpass closing.

“The purpose is not to `slap a padlock on the Lakefront Trail. I can appreciate the concern about what that might symbolize. The purpose is to reduce the number of overnight access points to the Lakefront trail so the Police Department can more effectively manage those underpasses that remain open,” he wrote.

Reilly agreed that, “in a perfect world, the best approach would be to have a stronger police presence” at all of the underpasses leading to the Lakefront Trail overnight.

But six months into Emanuel’s two-year police hiring surge, Reilly said the Chicago Police Department simply does not have enough officers to “stand as sentries at all of these unsecured access points on a regular basis.”

Officers assigned to the 18th District are too “busy scrambling to fulfill calls for service,” he said.

“By locking some of the underpasses in Streeterville, we would be helping the Police Department stretch their limited resources further to use officers more efficiently,” he wrote.

Reilly argued that the overnight closing is “not exactly a revolutionary idea.”

He said “a number of” aldermen have told him they remember a time many years ago “when some of these pedestrian underpasses were locked every night.”

The Ohio Street underpass is “essentially located on a dead-end street with very limited vehicular traffic and fewer eyes on the street,” he said.

That has made the underpass a “popular late-night destination for kids who party on the street curbs, in closed parks and inside the underpass tunnel drinking, smoking marijuana and engaging in other illegal activities,” the alderman said.

Reilly dismissed as “unfounded” fears that people “stuck on the beach side of the underpass” after the gates close for the night would be tempted to dart across Lake Shore Drive.

“Just a block south, anyone stuck on the Lakefront Trail after hours would have the option to simply use the crosswalk at the intersection at Lake Shore Drive and Grand to leave the parks,” Reilly said.

He noted that the intersection is “very well-lit with literally thousands of eyes on it” from the high-rises above and “no nooks and crannies to hide to engage in criminal activity.”

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