Community Corner
City and Bloom Township Break Ground for New Building
City of Chicago Heights and Bloom Township worked together on a new building project. The new building will be built in the parking lot.
Joseph Stanfa, the Highway Commissioner for Bloom Township was excited to lead a chapter of a building project for Bloom Township.
Last week, Stanfa and other dignitaries broke ground on a new building for the Bloom Township Highway Township building.
“We’re breaking ground for our new facility for the Bloom Township road and bridge district” Stanfa explains. “This is happening because our old facility is sitting on an old Nicor gas plant that had to be environmentally cleaned up. This new building construction will be no cost to the taxpayers because this is coming from funds from clean up funds put together by Nicor and ComEd.”
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The toxins are 50 feet below ground level, according to Stanfa there is no threat to the community. “We will be swapping that land for this new parcel” said Stanfa. “The city will have a redevelopment program on the former site.”
The new building also features a salt dome that will be shared with the city of Chicago Heights. “The new facility will feature for offices, mechanical repair, truck repair and operations storage for road and bridge maintenance materials.” Target opening day will be Fall of 2020.
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“It’s good to be building in Chicago Heights” Stanfa said. “it’s an important sign for the residents we haven’t given up on the city, it’s going to be a state of the art facility that will be helping the taxpayers and the motoring public that will be traveling on the roads of Bloom Township.”
One of Stanfa’s projects has also been to save the Monarch butterflies. Incorporated on the land of the new building will be a monarch butterfly garden.
As Joe Stanfa, Mayor Gonzalez, Mayor Eidam of Lansing, TJ Somer and architects broke ground, guests who attended began applauding.
“The city owned this property” Mayor Gonzalez. “We subdivided it with the Kidney Dialysis on one side and Bloom Township Highway Department on the other side. We’re going to keep on building, economic development is very important to the city. This land has been vacant for over forty years and now with this new building, we’re hoping to expand in the downtown area” he adds.
Mayor Gonzalez said he would like to see retail at the former St. James site and planning to expand focusing on the downtown area.
“We’ve been working on this for over three years” said Mayor Gonzalez. “We’re going to continue to develop the city one lot at a time.”
