North Lawndale trucking hub on hold amid community outrage

A plan for a controversial trucking hub in a North Lawndale neighborhood is on hold after the developer decided it needed more time to persuade a city review board on the project’s merits.

The announced delay at the Chicago Plan Commission meeting Thursday follows community pushback on the proposal and a letter from Ald. Michael Rodriguez (22nd) saying he opposes the development.

The Plan Commission, which is an important step toward a development’s approval, said it will consider a more than 15-acre logistics operation along Ogden between Pulaski and Keeler next month.

“At the beginning of the process, I made it very clear, along with the support of my advisory committee, that we would not support any development that would include transportation, distribution or logistics at this site,” Rodriguez wrote in a letter to the Plan Commission ahead of its meeting. “The committee members also expressed that they wanted to come to an agreement for community benefits before they would support a planned development at this location.”

Rodriguez stated Monday night at a community meeting that he would not support a logistics and distribution center that also calls for demolishing a dozen historic buildings.

Even though the project was identified as a logistics operation by the developer, IDI Logistics, Rodriguez said after the community meeting that he preferred a site that provided union manufacturing jobs. At Monday's meeting, IDI said it would continue talking to Rodriguez but hasn't commented further.

Residents, some saying they only recently learned about the development, said this week that they don’t see how the IDI project helps their community, and they worry about the safety and environmental hazards of large trucks traveling through their Lawndale Triangle neighborhood.

“They’re creating a freight hub in our community and we can’t do anything about it,” resident Rochelle Jackson told the Sun-Times this week.

IDI has said it would build the facility for a future tenant, though no business has been identified.

Warehouse operations have been popping up in and around Chicago in recent years to meet demand for online orders among many companies. In the city, they’ve largely been located in low-income communities of color. North Lawndale, which is more than 80% Black with a median income less than half of the city’s median, fits the profile.

Mayor Brandon Johnson vowed last September to address issues of land use and zoning that continue to put polluting businesses in already overstressed communities.

Under a binding agreement with the federal government, Chicago has promised to address historical practices that often located polluters in West Side and South Side areas.