That Ill-Advised Push To Close Ohio Street Underpass Overnight Has Gone Through

By Stephen Gossett in News on Jun 28, 2017 5:18PM

Underpass entrance at E Ohio St and Lake Shore Drive / Google Maps

The city has agreed to a downtown alderman's call to close the Ohio Street underpass overnight. The decision was effectively taken out of the City Council's hands when Mayor Rahm Emanuel agreed to the request, according to Wednesday reports.

Ald. Brendan Reilly called for the popular entryway—which connects the Near North Side to the lakefront—to be closed between midnight and 6 a.m. during "warm weather months." Under Rahm's order, it will be closed between 12 a.m. and 5 a.m.

Reilly's plea came in the wake of a highly publicized killing near the underpass. Raven Lemons, 25, was shot in the head and killed in the 500 block of East Ohio Street, at around 2:40 a.m., the Sunday before last.

Reilly's request got some heated blowback from some corners of the City Council who thought it smacked of a racial double standard, most loudly from Ald. Anthony Beale (9th Ward). “If we start closing streets every time somebody gets killed, we would have over 600 blocks in the black and brown communities shut down,” Beale said, according to the Sun-Times.

If Emanuel ever feared that such a closure could be perceived as an admission of a lack of safety in tourist-magnet spots, the decision now will surely play into the perception laid out by Beale.

Beyond that criticism, transportation watchers like Streetsblog noted that the Lakefront Trail does not close. But shutting down the underpass would unnecessarily choke off a main route for six hours to people who use it for transportation, even if late at night.