South Loop man leading effort for cycling center

Could be core of new South Side development

04/13/2011 1:20 PM

By Ben Meyerson
Editor

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Courtesy RTKL ASSOCIATES

For years, Mayor Richard M. Daley has been a huge advocate for biking in the city of Chicago, putting bike racks and lanes all over town.

Now, to hear South Loop resident Emanuele Bianchi tell it, all the city needs is a professional cycling center to turn our youth into a legion of world-class competitive two-wheelers.

So he’s taken the charge in creating one of the first world-class cycling centers in the nation on Chicago’s Southeast Side.

The Chicago Velo Campus, as it’s called, will be a facility roughly the size of the United Center that’ll sit on the lakefront at 87th Street, the former site of a massive U.S. Steel plant.

On top of a racing track for cyclists and indoor and outdoor mountain bike courses, it’ll have an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a fitness center and an elevated indoor running track looking out over the lake, among other things.

Bianchi, a cycling aficionado and an Italian immigrant, thinks there’s space for a facility like the Velo Campus to get the youth of Chicago involved and excited in cycling beyond simple transportation.

“If you go to the South Loop School, you understand there is only a basketball court,” Bianchi said. “I’m trying to bring into the culture, the bicycles, not only to the older guys who decide to be more respectful of the environment, but to young people. I think it belongs all over the city and all over the country.”

It’s part of a much bigger plan for the U.S. Steel site, to which the city has designated nearly $100 million in tax increment financing cash for redevelopment. The plan calls for a new neighborhood to be built from scratch, with new homes and businesses.

Bianchi said the companies planning the site have given them a substantial discount on the land (though he wasn’t allowed to say how much), presumably so that he can create an anchor in the neighborhood.

Bianchi’s building a temporary outdoor track at the site now, with plans to build the indoor facility when the first phase of development begins in 2013.


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