Chyrl Hrpcha’s family left Joliet’s East Side 30 years ago in search of space. They found it at the southern edge of the city, in a tiny subdivision surrounded by vast farm fields.
It was blissfully quiet, Hrpcha, 76, recalled. “You had to go 20 minutes in any direction to get anywhere.”
They moved once more but returned to south Joliet seven years ago, buying a duplex in a new subdivision just off Illinois Route 53. By then, the bucolic landscape that first attracted Hrpcha and others to the area was already gone.
In its place stood the sprawling CenterPoint intermodal complex, called North America’s largest inland port, where millions of shipping containers brought by train are unloaded onto trucks and hauled to nearby warehouses for eventual delivery to customers of national retailers like Amazon and Walmart.
Hrpcha found once-empty streets clogged with semis and the people those warehouses employ. Heading north for a doctor’s appointment or to get groceries could easily take at least an hour, and often involved a perilous journey over pothole-pocked roads and through accident-prone intersections.
“You just feel like you have no control over anything that’s happening in your community anymore,” she said.
As another massive warehouse complex takes shape in the area, Joliet’s courting of the booming logistics industry and the repercussions of those developments on formerly rural areas south of town loom large among the myriad issues facing Illinois’ third-largest city as its residents vote next week to decide a hotly contested mayoral race.
Two-term incumbent Bob O’Dekirk, an attorney and former Joliet police officer, faces challenges from community affairs professional Tycee Bell and Terry D’Arcy, a car dealer and well-known philanthropist.
O’Dekirk’s supporters praise the mayor for leading the charge to annex at least 1,300 acres of previously unincorporated land for Kansas City-based NorthPoint Development’s roughly $2 billion proposed warehouse complex.
The development pledges to create thousands of jobs for a city stung by dwindling casino tax receipts and still scarred by the loss of major employers: U.S. Steel, Caterpillar and the state prison, to name a few.
“That’s a lot of work for people here,” said Kathy Spieler, 57 a Housing Authority of Joliet commissioner and O’Dekirk supporter. “In this day and age, jobs might come before some land loss.”
Still, the project continues to face stiff opposition from area residents who successfully organized to defeat NorthPoint’s previous efforts to win approval from officials in Elwood and Will County.
Both Bell and D’Arcy have pledged to bring residents and neighboring communities together to address concerns over future economic development in the region.
“When you talk about revitalizing and you bring in these projects, certain groups of people are at the table,” Bell said. “Usually it’s boards or people who want to invest, and no one asks what’s in it for citizens.”
City hall in turmoil
O’Dekirk’s critics say his handling of NorthPoint illustrates an often-overbearing leadership style that alienates neighboring communities and provokes political infighting that has marred his tenure as mayor.
“I’ve got no bones about it. Our mayor is extremely toxic,” said state Sen. Rachel Ventura, D-Joliet.
Under O’Dekirk’s watch, Joliet has had five city managers in as many years. The police department, meanwhile, is on its fourth chief since 2017, and is the target of an ongoing Illinois attorney general’s office civil probe — requested by O’Dekirk and the council — following leaked video of the 2020 in-custody death of Eric Lurry.
That same year, amid nationwide racial justice protests over the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, O’Dekirk was shown on video tussling with a man and his brother during a Joliet protest. The mayor said he used self-defense tactics learned during his time as a police officer. Attorneys for the siblings called it an unprovoked attack.
In the end, Joliet Patch reported, the two men settled their federal lawsuits against O’Dekirk and Joliet police for $93,000.
The mayor blames much of that City Hall turnover on a faction of five City Council members known locally as the “Mudron Five,” named for council member Pat Mudron.
Two of the five members of that supposed group are no longer on the council; two, including Mudron, are up for reelection next week; the fifth is retiring.
“There’s no question those individuals created an unstable environment,” O’Dekirk said. “I think we’ve gotten past them. We’re in the process of repairing that.”
In the latest display of political toxicity, Joliet’s inspector general released a report earlier this month that accused Mudron, four other now-former city officials (including the police chief and deputy police chief) and a then-local newspaper editor of conspiring in 2020 to file a false police report against O’Dekirk.
The police report alleged that O’Dekirk threatened to release compromising photographs of Donald “Duck” Dickinson, then a council member and part of the so-called Mudron Five.
Illinois State Police investigated. In the end, Dickinson was charged with attempted disorderly conduct, which was later dismissed. The mayor was never charged in relation to the allegations in the initial police report.
D’Arcy said the mayor’s handling of protests, the turnover in key leadership positions and the recent inspector general’s report have tarnished Joliet’s image.
“There’s been so much negativity,” he said. “The mayor sets the stage.”
O’Dekirk bristled at criticism of his leadership style.
“My record is clear,” he said. “I’m not going to sit here and defend myself.”
‘We should be better’
Some Joliet residents believe the political bickering distracts from more pressing issues facing the city: Public safety. Affordable housing. The need for more equitable investment across historically blue-collar neighborhoods east of the Des Plaines River, now home to a growing Latino population — about a third of Joliet’s 150,000 residents identify as Hispanic or Latino, according to recent U.S. Census data.
“There’s always been a difference, whether it’s economic growth, our streets, our sidewalks, our schools,” said Garland Mays, 52, a housing authority commissioner and president of the East-Side Forest Park Neighborhood Council. “We’ve always been on the back burner.”
O’Dekirk’s challengers agree.
“We should be better,” said Bell, who grew up on Joliet’s East Side. “It shouldn’t be, do we have enough concerts and restaurants? It should be, why don’t our leaders reflect the culture of our city?”
Both Bell and D’Arcy said the city should be more aggressive in pursuing state and federal grant dollars.
“I think there’s a lot of money we’re missing the boat on,” D’Arcy said. “We’re the third-largest city in the state. We should be collaborating more with federal and state partners.”
For his part, O’Dekirk said the city was straddled with massive deficits and near bankruptcy when he took office in 2014.
“We’ve had $5 billion-plus in economic development,” he said of his eight years as mayor. “The city is doing extremely well.”
A recently approved agreement with Chicago will see Joliet and nearby communities tap into Lake Michigan water, averting a potential crisis as reports show the city running out of available groundwater by 2030.
Last year, city officials approved spending millions of dollars on a roughly 300-acre development near I-80 and I-55. The mixed-use project would include residential, retail and office space, anchored by the relocated Hollywood Casino Joliet.
North of downtown on the grounds of the former U.S. Steel plant, O’Dekirk said the city has had discussions with Argonne National Laboratory and others on converting the long-dormant site into an electric car battery recycling plant. D’Arcy, meanwhile, said he’s talked to two-sport legend Bo Jackson about opening an indoor sports training center — known informally as a “Bo Dome” — on the site.
Continuing into downtown Joliet, once the city’s retail and entertainment hub, both O’Dekirk and D’Arcy said efforts to revitalize the area should get a boost once construction starts on a planned outdoor plaza across from the iconic Rialto Square Theatre.
D’Arcy said the city should look to attract younger people downtown by converting existing buildings into housing or student centers for nearby colleges and universities.
“There’s so much pride in this community,” he said. “We just need to dust it off and shine it up and get it back again.”
‘Sometimes they don’t care’
On a windy Monday afternoon in March, Chyrl Hrpcha and her longtime friend Barbara Whitfield got in Hrpcha’s car and took a Chicago Tribune reporter on a tour of south Joliet’s current and future logistics hubs.
Turning out of her subdivision Hrpcha approached Route 53 as a semitrailer tried to turn onto Millsdale Road despite three signs prohibiting their presence on the road.
“See, he’s got to stop and think about it because he saw the sign,” Whitfield, 76, remarked.
“And sometimes they don’t care and they just go,” Hrpcha added.
Continuing on, they point out family farms bought up by NorthPoint and the locations of various proposed bridges that would span Route 53 and other streets as part of what’s been called a “closed loop” designed to pull trucks off local roads when the complex opens.
None of the bridges have been built, and NorthPoint representatives did not respond to an emailed interview request.
But O’Dekirk said that closed loop, and the nearly completed Houbolt Road extension and toll bridge from I-80 to CenterPoint, should alleviate traffic and infrastructure issues.
“NorthPoint is a huge project, but it’s not just dropping random warehouses,” he said. “This is a controlled development. I think Joliet is leading the way.”
Area residents aren’t convinced. The closed loop idea hinges on funneling trucks from NorthPoint’s complex to the rail yards in CenterPoint, which opposed the idea, arguing that the influx of new trucks would disrupt business and damage existing infrastructure.
Opponents argue those trucks will still need to leave the “closed loop” to deliver goods from warehouses to stores and customers.
“That’s what’s so frustrating when elected officials beat the drum of the closed loop,” said Stephanie Irvine, 38, a resident of unincorporated Jackson Township who helped start a grassroots campaign to oppose NorthPoint. “It’s a folly. It doesn’t make sense logically because they’re not going to endlessly drive around in a circle.”
Beyond traffic and infrastructure issues, opponents question what kind of damage the sprawling complex could inflict on the environment, including the nearby Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie nature reserve (two environmental groups, Sierra Club and Openlands, are among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the city, still pending in Will County court).
They also question the quality of the thousands of jobs the project’s developers pledge to create — fears are that while union labor will be used for construction, many of the jobs in the warehouses will be staffed by temporary workers.
Back at Hrpcha’s home, she and Whitfield said they’ve shifted much of their lives east. Instead of Joliet, they head to New Lenox to see the doctor, or to shop.
They’re tired of being called “old fogies” and “NorthPoint ninnies,” combatants on the wrong side of yet-another NIMBY battle against progress.
If NorthPoint or any developer offered to buy Hrpcha’s home, she said she’d probably take the money and move.
Not Whitfield: “They’ll carry me out on a stretcher.”
