$12 Million Capital Grant Awarded To Waukegan Port District

WAUKEGAN, IL — Waukegan Port District has been awarded a $12 million grant for capital improvements, state transportation officials announced.

A quay wall reconstruction project is one of 12 projects worth a combined $108.3 million to be selected for the Port Facilities Capital Investment Grant Program.

Omer Osman, secretary of the Illinois Department of Transportation, said the awards would strengthen the state's status as North America's multimodal transportation hub.

"Illinois moves 1.2 billion tons of goods via road, rail, air and water each year. Nearly 9 percent of those tons were moved on water at a value of — guess what — $31 billion," Osman said at a news conference alongside Gov. J.B. Pritzker Wednesday in East St. Louis.

The Waukegan project will roughly double the port's operational window by dampening waves, according to a description of the planned improvement provided by a department of transportation spokesperson.

"The orientation of the harbor entrance, since first constructed, has been problematic. Its direct open approach to the east allows significant wave energy to penetrate deep into the harbor, making for problematic wave agitation at the docks," the description said. "This limits the viable operating service window for moving cargo on and off vessels which in turn reduces the economic performance of the port."

The current quay wall at Waukegan's inner harbor is no longer functional and needs to be restored or replaced, according to the description. But with new advances in dock design technology, wave-absorbing technology can be integrated into the plan for replacing the deteriorated wall.

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Money for the grant comes from the $45 billion Rebuild Illinois infrastructure plan signed into law in June 2019, which separately allocated $40 million to build a new inland port in Cairo.

Since then, the state transportation department received 23 applications for projects at public ports before selecting the grantees based on a competitive process, according to transportation officials.

"That means we went looking for ideas from our partners at the local level on how to best improve their facilities and the services they provide," Osman said.

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"Under this governor," Osman added, "IDOT is reliant more than ever on input from our communities to tell us where the public resources should be invested."

Max Pekcan, the port's general manager, told Patch he had yet to get word about the grant. He said he would be able to share more details about the project would be available after state officials had provided official notice of the grant award.

Founded in 1955, the Waukegan Port District owns parts of the Waukegan harbor, the 700-slip recreational marina and the Waukegan National Airport, according to a March 2021 profile of the Waukegan Port District from the Illinois Marine Transportation Plan. It described the port's capital needs as "reengineering of the commercial dock for future high water use and safer docking for large vessels."