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Chicago Avenue on the West Side could receive landscaping, branding, and infrastructure improvements to make the Soul City Corridor safer, more attractive, and more walkable.
The Chicago Department of Transportation is launching public meetings, focus groups, and polls to gather community input on transforming one of North Austin’s major business centers. It’s part of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Invest South / West program and the Chicago Works Initiative, a five-year capital city infrastructure plan to boost communities.
The street renovations are aimed at reinforcing previous efforts to reinforce Chicago Avenue’s black cultural identity.
“The goal is to build a safe, accessible and attractive road to encourage community and economic growth,” said Lubka Benak, CDOT program director.
Suggested improvements include road renewal, drainage improvements to prevent flooding, better street lighting, upgrades to traffic lights, public seating areas, and landscaping.
The redesign could also bring more trash cans, benches, bike racks, planters, and better signs to the corridor to make it cleaner and more welcoming to pedestrians, she said. The design of these enhancements could also be tweaked to brand the corridor and create a consistent look and feel based on feedback from residents, Benak said.
The transportation department will consider every element of the pavement as it redesigns, including the sidewalks, bike lanes, traffic intersections, street lights and sidewalk furniture, Benak said.
The project planning will last until summer 2022, with the groundbreaking ceremony to begin at the end of next year.
“We’re going to look at the width of the pavement and sidewalk and see how the space could be reallocated for different uses,” she said.
Improving road safety is a priority. The department checked 918 accidents that occurred along the roadway in 2014-2018. Five were fatal.
The evaluated safety infrastructures include protected bike paths, pedestrian shelters in the median and curb extensions or bulges in order to “create shorter crossing distances and make pedestrians more visible,” said Benak.
The city’s design process incorporates portions of previous community-led studies and plans, such as the Austin Quality of Life Plan and the West Side Vision Zero Plan, which aims to eliminate road deaths. Building on these efforts will help traffic officials “understand the priorities that the community has already expressed,” said Leslie Roth, director of Lamar Johnson Collaborative, an architecture group working on the project.
The corridor improvements will also realize some of the goals of the Soul City Corridor Development Framework Plan 2020, which aims to rename Chicago Avenue as a cultural, creative, and economic hub for black Chicagoans.
“There should be a place in town that acts as a cultural enclave for African Americans. Soul City is, ”said Malcolm Crawford, executive director of the Austin African American Business Networking Association, which renamed the corridor.
Previous community plans for Chicago Avenue have suggested creating a “strong network of public spaces for gathering … and including some open spaces,” Roth said.
The corridor improvement plan may also include previous ideas for beautifying the street with more trees, landscaping, public art, design elements like light pole flags, and local monuments like the Chinatown Gateway or Fulton Market Gateway to give the area a unified visual identity to lend.
Residents “felt the corridor should look modern; it should be artistic and contemporary. Overall, the look and feel of the corridor was very important to members of the Austin ward, ”said Roth.
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