CTA Purple Line, Red Line project continues with upcoming Edgewater community space
Project will ultimately renovate Red Line from Belmont to Howard and Purple Line from Belmont to Linden
CHICAGO (WLS) -- On Thursday morning, crews broke ground on a project to create an open space a mile long on the city's North Side.
This is part of the CTA's modernization of the Red and Purple lines.
This space will run along the old Red Line from Lawrence Avenue to Ardmore Avenue.
The idea is to take an old crumbling space and turn it into a community space.
The work is all part of the a $2.1 billion Red and Purple Line Modernization Project.
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In Edgewater, crews have determined the 100-year-old structures won't work moving forward, so they will be torn down and replaced, creating open spaces underneath the tracks.
"Twenty years ago, nobody thought that we would be rebuilding the Red Line, but the community, working together with the CTA, pushed for this," said Ald. Harry Osterman, of the 48th Ward. "And now we're going to have a state-of-the-art Red Line above it, but also we're going to have an activation underneath it that will stand the test of time with our community."
This project, which started in 2019 and is moving in phases, will ultimately renovate the Red Line from Belmont Avenue to Howard Street and the Purple Line from Belmont to Linden Avenue and now provide community space underneath the tracks.
"This is really an outgrowth of innovative thinking that my team has applied to this project, where they understand the importance of community first," CTA President Dorval Carter Jr. said.
