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Oak Park Ave. residents in Morton Grove struggling with broken street, flooding
Residents at the end of the 9300 block of Oak Park Avenue in Morton Grove are concerned after the village resurfaced the street but stopped and left several houses still with a cracked, flood-prone street. | Sun-Times Media
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Updated: August 27, 2012 10:22AM
MORTON GROVE — Laurie Katz has taken to calling her stretch of Oak Park Avenue “the road to nowhere,” and not just because it’s a dead end.
But Katz, pointing to a place about a block from her house where new blacktop ends and her broken street begins, questions why the village didn’t just finish resurfacing the street while all of the equipment was out there. “They could have thrown in another $20,000 and finished it,” she said. On top of that both Katz and Carolyn Zembron, who lives down the street, said they have suffered from street flooding for years. For Zembron it means water comes well up into her yard and Katz suffers from flooding in the back yard of her house, as well. But Village Engineer Chris Tomich said Morton Grove officials are aware of the problem and he is looking at a way to solve it. “We haven’t forgotten about them,” Tomich said. The village this year replaced a water main on Lyons and as part of that project resurfaced that street. A portion of Oak Park north of the intersection with Lyons also was resurfaced because it was damaged during work on Lyons, he said. Tomich said the village could have spent the money to resurface the rest of the street north to the dead end. But before that is done he wants to figure out what should be done about flooding so that the street does not have to be torn up in a year or two. “We want to make a conscious decision about whether we’re going to make storm-sewer improvements,” Tomich said. For Zembron, that could not come soon enough. She has lived on the same block for 49 years, the past 43 in her current house. When she moved in one of the first things her late husband did was install two sump pumps and an emergency generator to spare their home from flood damage. She said residents sometimes have trouble getting out and she said she is also concerned about emergency vehicles being able to get in. “What if one of my kids needs as ambulance,” said Katz, who has two young children. Both Zembron and Katz said much of the problem with their road stems from damage that occurred during construction of Frank Hren Park. Katz’s section of Oak Park Avenue is just east of the park and was used by trucks during its development. That project lasted about 10 years and wasn’t completed until the Morton Grove Park District signed an agreement with Golf Elementary School District 67 to take over completion and maintenance of the park. But before that, trucks were in and out repeatedly, Katz said. At one point dirt that had been put into the park had to be removed because it contained glass and other debris, and the site was fenced. Katz said former village administrator Larry Arft told neighbors that when the work was done the street would be repaired. “He said when it was all finished we would get a new road because of all the abuse it’s taken,” Katz said. But Arft left in 2003 and the village has had three administrators since then. Katz and Zembron said they have talked with Tomich but feel they are being ignored. But Tomich said he is taking their concerns seriously. At one point when District 67 was talking about selling off land for a car dealership the village looked at the possibility of putting some kind of stormwater-detention facility on the site that would have kept the street east of the site from flooding. The problem, he said, is that the area where some of the homeowners live is lower than the surrounding land. On top of that the stormwater system that is there now is just not adequate to handle all of the water during a big storm. “They’re basically in a bathtub,” Tomich said. “They’re basically in a bowl and the water gets to the bottom of the hill.” He said Katz’s problem is particularly bad because her back yard is kind of a basin that fills with water once it reached a certain level. He said one thing that would fix the problem would be construction of an underground vault that could collect excess storm water. “That’s easy, but expensive,” Tomich said. A less-costly measure would be open detention ponds of some kind. Those, though, would have to be placed on private property, he said. He is looking at other options, as well, and said he may include some type of project in his budget proposal for next year. Then it will be up to Morton Grieve trustees to decide whether to fund the project next year or wait. And Tomich said he can’t predict for certain when the problem will be resolved.
