Illinois Budget Impasse Stalls Olive Harvey College Construction

Construction of the partially completed Transportation, Distribution and Logistics Center at Olive Harvey Community College on Chicago’s south side has been delayed for over 18 months because of the state budget stalemate which put the state’s $31.6 million share of the project’s $45 million price tag on hold. The building, designed to house automotive and diesel engine laboratories, a dynamometer, driving simulators and vehicle repair bays alongside related classrooms, sits empty and incomplete.

Jim Bruckner of Chas F. Bruckner and Son, plumbing contractor on the project, says he has never seen anything like the state’s stop order on the job. “They just shut the doors, locked the gate and said ‘we’ll let you know when you can return.’”

Chicago City Colleges has offered to complete the project at its own expense, but the Illinois Capitol Development Board has insisted on City College repayment of the state’s $24 million expenditure on the project to date before the CDB would allow construction to continue, because state law requires the CDB to supervise all higher education construction funded even in part by the state. State stop orders have been issued on a total of more than 200 state funded construction projects since the legislature failed to pass budgets in 2015 and 2016. Meanwhile the proposed cost of each of those stalled projects continues to rise as construction wages and material costs increase over the years.