Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Diversey Community Coalition’s (DCC) position on this site?
The DCC is actively advocating for Equitable Transit-Oriented Development (ETOD) at the rare, acre+ corner lot located at 1111 W. Diversey Parkway. We believe this vital neighborhood asset should be utilized for mixed-use buildings that bring multi-bedroom family housing, affordable homes, and active street-level retail directly to the transit corridor.
We are not “anti-electricity” or “anti-infrastructure”. We are firmly anti-wrong-location. We oppose ComEd’s proposal to build a massive, regional, windowless industrial substation on this specific plot because it permanently violates the city’s zoning goals and squanders our most valuable transit land for the next century.
Why is this specific lot so critical for the neighborhood?
This plot is uniquely valuable due to its designation under Chicago’s Connected Communities Ordinance. It is a rare acre+ corner lot sitting just 600 feet from an ADA-accessible “L” stop and is classified as a designated Pedestrian Street (P-Street).
The city explicitly designed these protections to foster dense, walkable shopping districts and car-free residential options. Once transit-adjacent land is given up to heavy industrial use, it is lost to the community for 100 years. We must protect this lot to ensure teachers, service workers, and families have the opportunity to plant roots near transit and schools.
There is already an existing decommissioned substation structure on that lot. Doesn’t that mean a substation belongs there?
Absolutely not. The existing, historical substation is a compact, neighborhood-scale facility. It occupies only 1 to 2 standard residential lots—which is exactly the type of small-scale utility footprint seamlessly integrated all throughout the city without disrupting neighborhoods.
What ComEd is proposing now is a massive, regional hub that expands across 15+ residential lots, creating a football-field-sized industrial barrier along Diversey. Just because a small, local asset once sat here does not make this location the right fit for an industrial project at this extreme scale, nor does it justify ignoring modern, non-wire technology.
ComEd claims the neighborhood needs more power. Won’t blocking this project cause blackouts?
No. Grid reliability is essential, but building a single, football-field-sized industrial box over 15 residential lots is an outdated 20th-century approach to energy. Modern, sustainable cities meet rising electrical loads by deploying Non-Wire Alternatives (NWAs) and Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), such as advanced battery storage and smart-grid infrastructure.
Instead of one massive regional hub, local power needs should be met using a distributed network of smaller, lot-sized substations that blend into the neighborhood framework rather than destroying active transit corridors. We are demanding an independent engineering audit to prove that these modern alternatives can meet the local load without sacrificing our Pedestrian Street.
Don’t we need this industrial substation to support Electric Vehicles (EVs) and the green transition?
Public transit is the ultimate green technology. Providing transit-adjacent housing for hundreds of families allows people to embrace low-impact, car-free living, which removes cars from the road entirely. This eliminates the massive environmental and structural strains of transportation far more effectively than an industrial utility block.
Forcing people to live further away from transit hubs because a windowless industrial box took over residential land actually increases suburban sprawl and driving dependency. True environmental progress means pairing Illinois’ green energy transition with smart, walkable urban density.
How is ComEd trying to bypass the public to build this project?
ComEd is attempting to take what they view as the “easy route” by claiming they have the right to build this massive facility “By-Right” under a minor zoning classification. They want to convince city officials that this regional-scale project is just a routine, “minor change” to an existing utility site so they can obtain quick administrative approval behind closed doors.
What is our response to ComEd’s “By-Right” claim?
We are drawing a firm line. An industrial facility that swallows an acre of transit land and spans the size of a football field is a major expansion that completely alters the fabric of our community.
We are working directly with our united local elected officials—including Aldermen Knudsen, Lawson, and Waguespack, State Senator Feigenholtz, and State Representative Williams—to ensure ComEd cannot exploit administrative loopholes. We are demanding that this project be subjected to official public hearings before the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA), where the community has a legal right to speak, audit their claims, and force this regional hub into an appropriate industrial zone.
Is the coalition just a group of “NIMBYs” fighting neighborhood density?
Actually, the exact opposite is true. Traditional NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) groups fight against housing and increased local density; the DCC is explicitly THIMBY (Transit-oriented Housing In My Backyard).
We are actively fighting for more neighbors, more transit riders, more affordable housing options, and continuous storefront foot traffic to keep our local economy alive. We welcome neighborhood growth. We are simply stopping a pattern of corporate land-grabs that treat valuable pedestrian zones as empty industrial dead zones.
Are you just trying to push an unpleasant utility project into a poorer neighborhood?
This is an issue of Zoning and Transit-Oriented Development. Industrial-scale, regional infrastructure belongs inside established Manufacturing and Industrial Zones, completely separated from high-density transit-oriented residential sidewalks and school safety zones.
Chicago has a systemic history of squandering transit land meant for people—from Gage Park being turned into an Amazon distribution center to Ford City’s transit extensions being stifled by warehouses. We believe that transit-oriented development land belongs to the people across every neighborhood in Chicago, and protecting it here sets a precedent that protects communities citywide.
Isn’t a substation better for the community than leaving the lot completely vacant?
A vacant lot is temporary, but a 100-year industrial substation is a permanent economic and structural mistake. ComEd has owned this lot since 2021 when they purchased it from the Mini Dealership. Since that time, several developers have stepped forward wanting to build vibrant, community-facing projects on this land. ComEd rejected all of them and intentionally chose to keep it vacant to serve its own corporate timeline. We should not let ComEd dictate the next century of our neighborhood by forcing us to choose between a blighted empty lot and a football-field-sized dead zone.
An unmanned substation provides almost zero property or sales tax revenue to the community. Conversely, an ETOD mixed-use residential building creates ongoing economic life: new residents become daily customers for local small businesses, and the development generates significant property and sales tax revenues that directly fund our local public schools.