UPTOWN — Once the wrecking ball starts swinging, the rats come out — that's just a fact of life when it comes to demolition projects in a big city. And the CTA's $203 million makeover of the Wilson Red Line will be no exception, officials said.
Ald. James Cappleman (46th) and the Chicago Transit Authority held a community meeting Tuesday about the Red Line project to let Uptown residents know how demolition and construction could affect them once the project starts this fall, and one major concern was rats.
Adeshina Emmanuel says Uptown's alleys have plenty of rats already, and neighbors don't want more:
"A lot of these buildings have been empty for many years, and there's probably lots of vermin ready to scurry into my neighborhood," one concerned Uptown resident said during the meeting.
The first two vacant structures scheduled to meet the wrecking ball in October sit just west of the station's Wilson Avenue auxiliary entrance, and include a former restaurant space at 1111 W. Wilson Ave. The vacant Wilson-Broadway Mall across the street at 1114 W. Wilson Ave. is coming down in late October or November. The Majestic Store building at West Leland Avenue and North Broadway would be next, likely near the end of this year or start of next year, but the vacant building's historic terra cotta facade will survive, officials said.
CTA representive Jeff Wilson reassured residents that "CTA is very aware of the rat situation that's currently taking place underneath the 'L', and in the Gerber building," which houses the original station house along with retail spaces that have been vacant for years.
"So we're going to have pre-construction rat abatement, during-construction rat abatement, post-construction rat abatement, and whenever the community wants rat abatement — rat abatement," he said, to relieved laughter from the nearly 100 people at the meeting. "Rat abatement is at the top of our abatement issues for this project."
CTA spokeswoman Tammy Chase said she didn't have any guesses about how many critters are camping out in buildings under and around the train that have to be demolished.
"We know there are rats, we know there are mice…we can't go in and count them," she said, emphasizing that it's not an unusual problem after demolitions.
One Uptown resident at Tuesday's meeting offered to loan his cat named "Throat Ripper" to the cause.
The Children's Memorial Hospital demolition in Lincoln Park spurred similar concerns about rat control from that community, as well as Ald. Michele Smith, who said then "rats are an issue whenever there is excavation at any site, whether it's a single family home or this site."
She said then that most of the pests live under buildings and run out to new locales after the buildings come down.
CTA aims to modernize Wilson station by 2017, expanding its capacity and making it the only Red Line/Purple Line transfer point between Belmont and Howard — and the only ADA accessible station between the Addison and Granville Red Line stops.
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