Standing on the porch of his Harvey home where he’s lived for 50 years and raised his family, Joe Poole thinks ahead to a year from now, when he’ll likely be out of his home to make way for a flood control project.
“The last thing on my mind was leaving,” he said, alongside his two daughters, who between them have five children and who will also have to find new homes.
Called the Central Park Stormwater Detention Basin Project, it’s intended to ease flooding and protect 209 buildings in Harvey and cost about $9.8 million, according to the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, which is working on the project with the city.
It will also involve installing nearly 2 miles of storm sewers, according to the MWRD, which is working to secure federal grant money.
A park, Central Park, is also planned on the site of the vacant Ascension-St. Susanna Catholic Church at the southeast corner of Myrtle Avenue and 153rd Street. The property is owned by the city and just north of the planned basin.
The basin will be carved out of the neighborhood where residents such as Poole, 88, and his daughters — Lanora Poole, who lives with him with her children, and Carlita Poole-Tingle, who lives next door to her father and sister with her two children — are being told they need to move out before next summer.
That is when construction of the project is scheduled to begin, and the properties will be bought out under the state’s eminent domain act before work gets underway, according to the MWRD.
“We are a block, we know each other, we are a close-knit family,” Carlita Poole-Tingle said. “We never thought or imagined moving unless it was our will.”
She and other residents said they didn’t know about the flood control project or impact on their homes until a public meeting the MWRD held July in Harvey. The MWRD said the project had been in the planning stages since 2018 and after a final design contract was approved in November 2021, a kickoff meeting was held with the city.
Second Ward Ald. Colby Chapman, elected this spring, said her ward is where the flood control project is being located but said she had no clue about it when taking office.
“Why was I not made privy to this information?” she said while sitting with the Pooles and Taylor in Carlita Poole-Tingle’s home.
The MWRD held three public meetings at Harvey City Hall last month and said it sent multiple meeting notices via mail, and city officials knocked on doors and posted information on the city’s website.
Across the street from the Pooles, Dorothy Taylor, 85, has lived in her home for more than 50 years.
“All the seniors on this block worked hard for what they have here,” Taylor said. “I’m not ready to go anyplace.”
Her home and yard are well maintained and Taylor also mows an empty lot to the north of her “at least twice a month,” she said.
An Aug. 8 letter to Chapman from the MWRD said construction is expected to start next summer, with land acquisition scheduled to be completed before then. The district said construction is expected to take 18 months.
The MWRD said of 31 properties being acquired, 15 are occupied and the rest are vacant.
The district said it will provide appraisals for properties being acquired and review any appraisals property owners have performed on their own, which would be at their own cost.
Help with moving, such as claims for moving expenses and finding new housing, are part of the services being offered to residents being displaced, Catherine O’Connor, the MWRD director of engineering, said in her letter to the Chapman.
At some point, residents will be offered a purchase price for their homes.
Taylor said she doesn’t have a mortgage on her home and questions whether she could afford something similar.
“I don’t know if they can offer enough to buy something else,” she said.
According to the district, a relocation specialist will help homeowners who are being displaced with things such as preparing claim forms for costs such as moving expenses.
“In general, the purpose of the relocation program is to ensure that a resident is in an equal or better position,” and that “relocation benefits are tailored to each resident based on their personal situation,” according to O’Connor’s letter.
Chapman had, at the end of July, sent a series of questions to the district on residents’ behalf, including whether the location of the basin could be moved.
The exact location of the basin was determined in consultation with Harvey “over the past few years and was driven by their desire to develop a Central Park” near the former St. Susanna property, O’Connor wrote.
The church, 15234 Myrtle, is a half block north of Poole-Tingle’s home and she attended kindergarten there. St. Susanna was closed in 2021 after the Chicago Archdiocese announced the merger of the parish with St. John the Baptist, also in Harvey, and St. Gerard Majella in Markham.
Relocating the stormwater basin would require new studies, have a higher cost and benefit fewer properties as far as protecting them from flooding, according to the district.
Moving the basin could potentially jeopardize grant money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency the district is pursuing to assist with the project, O’Connor wrote.
Poole-Tingle, 47, has two children and her 43-year-old sister has three. The block is the only home they have ever known. They said they lost their mother last year and worry about the toll a move might take on their father.
“That transition for him is probably not going to be good,” Poole-Tingle said.
The homes the sisters live in would have been “our generational wealth” that they would pass on to their children, she said.
The sisters said they still have toys in a large toy box from when they were little girls, tucked away in the two-story home their father and Lanora live in.
“There are a lot of memories in that house,” Lanora Poole said. “How do you put a price on a priceless memory?”