Twenty years later, Daniel Varanauski still remembers the bitter cold of the winter nights he spent without heat when an electrical substation beside his home exploded. He remembers the terrible odor that hung in the air after the plume of black smoke rose over Lakeview, knocking out power to the neighborhood for days.
But he figured the ordeal was worth it when ComEd decommissioned the substation in February 2006. Until last year, nearly two decades later, when he learned the utility planned to build a new, football-field-sized substation in the very spot the old one once stood.
“We were shocked,” said Varanauski, 64, who lives near the intersection of Diversey Parkway and Seminary Avenue. “They want to reopen it with the same technology, so it could blow up again.”
Varanauski joined dozens of neighbors Saturday afternoon to protest the planned substation at 1111 W. Diversey Parkway, the latest demonstration in a months-long fight over the project. The Diversey Community Coalition, a neighborhood group formed to resist the proposal, says ComEd has failed to work with residents or be transparent about its plans.
The company purchased the property for $11.5 million in 2021, according to Cook County property records. Existing substations serving Lakeview and Lincoln Park are nearing capacity, the utility says, with electricity demand projected to exceed what the local grid can support by as early as 2029.
In a statement to the Tribune, ComEd said it has maintained “open and honest communication” about the project, pointing to two community meetings and a website with updated project information and links to meeting materials. The company also said it has participated in discussions with local alderpeople and stakeholders.
“We know that not everyone is a civil or electrical engineer tasked with the careful planning, maintenance and operational oversight of one of the most advanced and reliable electric grids in America,” the utility said.
Residents say they don’t dispute the need for more electrical infrastructure, just where ComEd wants to put it. Courtney Brody, for one, worries a new substation could bring the same persistent buzzing she hears when she walks by the ComEd substation near Wrigley Field.
“We all agree we need electrical enhancements, but not right here,” said Brody, 55, clutching a protest sign at the demonstration. “None of us can figure out why they want it here, but we’re not going to sit down and let it happen.”
Brody said the coalition has worked with local elected officials to identify 14 alternative sites that members say are farther from public transit and a daycare facility. But ComEd rejected the alternatives last month, citing cost and concerns that the sites were not large enough to accommodate the equipment needed to prevent blackouts and brownouts.
“None met the basic requirements necessary,” ComEd said of the proposed alternative locations.
The company also said moving the substation elsewhere could add as much as $270 million to the project’s cost, an expense that would fall upon customers across all Chicago wards, “not just the wards that would benefit from the substation.”
On Saturday, many neighbors, including coalition co-founder Marie Poppy, said they disputed the company’s reasoning. Poppy, 75, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1991, said the 2006 explosion “rocked my husband and I right out of bed.” Now, she and the coalition are challenging ComEd’s classification of the proposed substation as a minor utility, a designation she said allows the project to move forward without the community oversight required of a major utility.
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Poppy argues that a facility she says would stand five stories tall and span more than a football field should not qualify as a minor utility. The coalition is awaiting a decision from the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals, but in the meantime, Poppy said Ald. Timmy Knudsen (43rd) has put a hold on permits for the property until “all this is solved.”
“The code is not on our side right now,” Knudsen told the crowd Saturday. “ComEd walked in thinking they could build this substation feet away from bedrooms.”
Knudsen said residents aren’t fighting only to stop the substation. He wants the property developed into housing, and said its proximity to the Diversey Brown and Purple Line station makes it well suited for the kind of housing encouraged under Chicago’s transit-oriented development framework.
The proposed site is also within blocks of several schools and feet from a daycare with an exposed rooftop play area, according to Varanauski. Residents say requests for details about the project’s design and safety precautions have largely gone unanswered, fueling concerns about both potential health risks and the loss of a site they believe could instead provide needed housing.
“There’s so much energy in this community to have potentially more neighbors who love living here,” said Pat Graham, 73. “People are concerned and angry.”
Graham, a coalition member, said she recently walked 30 miles through the neighborhood distributing leaflets about the proposal. The group says thousands of people have signed up for its newsletter, and organizers tasked each person at Saturday’s rally to recruit 10 others to file public comments with the state’s commerce commission highlighting what they describe as “major logical inconsistencies” in ComEd’s proposal.
Near the end of a series of speeches from elected officials that included U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, State Sen. Sara Feigenholtz told demonstrators that ComEd representatives were in the crowd before accusing the utility of being “evasive, inconsistent, deceptive, and worst of all, dismissive.” She turned to two young children and asked whether they wanted to walk past a substation on their way to school each day. Both answered with a resounding “no.”
“We gotta listen to our littles,” Feigenholtz said. “These little voices are our community, and they all matter.”
Just before noon, demonstrators lined both sides of Diversey Parkway, hoisting colorful signs as passing cars honked in support. Farther back, several children covered the sidewalk with colorful chalk drawings.
But two of the youngest demonstrators planted themselves along the curb, rising onto their tiptoes to make sure passersby could see their signs.
“I love our neighborhood,” said Emilia Rosenberg, 10. “I like being able to walk around and not see big, smoking metal machines.”
Her younger brother, Henry, nodded in agreement. “If we build a substation, all it would be doing is causing pollution,” the 9-year-old said. “But if we build housing, it could save lives.”