Joliet makes headway on levee

Joliet continues to try to remove a flood plain designation that has started to have an effect on development in the downtown area.

The flood plain became official in February at about the same time the city approved plans for an El Guero supermarket project that has since slowed. Joliet since has been making progress designing a levee city officials hope will change the flood plain map that includes the El Guero site.

Joliet for years fought the flood plain map because of its effect on insurance rates and potential restrictions on construction.

The city now is looking at building a levee estimated to cost $4.8 million and hoping for federal funding to support it.

Joliet has sought help from elected officials in Congress in a campaign to either drop the flood plain designation or provide federal funding for a levee that would provide the protection needed to have the flood plain removed.

“That really caught the attention of the Army Corps of Engineers,” consulting engineer James Bibby told Joliet officials last month.

The downtown levee plan is “moving toward a federally funded project,” Bibby told the Joliet City Council Public Service Committee in November.

That could mean 65% of the cost of the levee could be covered by federal funding from an Army Corps of Engineers grant program.

Bibby is a principal with Rempe-Sharpe & Associates, the engineering firm hired by Joliet for the flood plain project.

That plan likely will involve Joliet building the levee north of Ruby Street to prevent the possibility of high waters from the Des Plaines River flooding an area that includes parts of the downtown business district and the residential neighborhood to the south.

A year ago the levee was estimated to cost at least $2 million but predicted to likely be more.

The potential length of the levee has been extended, leading to a higher cost now set at $4.8 million.

The good news, Bibby told the committee, is that the Army Corps of Engineers likely will approve an earthen levy, the least expensive of three options. A steel sheet pile levee could cost $6 million, and a levee built of reinforced concrete was estimated at $6.4 million.

Joliet officials unsuccessfully argued for 10 years that no levee was needed because such a flood has never happened and never would.

But the Federal Emergency Management Agency was unpersuaded and made the area a flood plain in February based on mapping standards put in place in the early 2000s.

The flood plain map includes 696 properties, while circumventing key areas of downtown. Most of Chicago Street is not in the flood plain. Neither is Harrah’s Casino.

But it does go just east of downtown and take in the former Certified Warehouse Foods slated for redevelopment.

Joliet approved more than $1 million in incentives to encourage supermarket company El Guero to put a store in the former Certified site at 118 E. Jackson St.

The incentive package was approved in February, and El Guero at the time said it planned to open in summer 2020.

The company now is pushing back the planned opening closer to June 2021, the deadline in the city incentive package, said Derek Conley, economic development specialist for the city.

“It is in the flood plain,” Conley said. “Having that in place, it’s another reason to slow-walk the project.”

El Guero indicated from the start that the project would take time. The plan goes beyond occupying the former Certified store. El Guero needs to renovate the building and wants to redevelop adjoining property to create a new shopping center.

It is difficult to gauge the effect the flood plain has on potential development, as it may deter developers before the city talks with them.

“There have been some developers that have kind of walked away,” Conley said. “Once I told them about the flood plain, they said, ‘There are other projects where I don’t have to deal with that.’ ”

The flood plain designation did deter a developer interested in the former AT&T building, Conley said. But he noted that John Bays is renovating the former Premier Building, which also is in the flood plain.

The city hopes to get the flood plain removed as an impediment.

“The first key is let’s try to get the grant,” Joliet Public Works Director Jim Trizna said.

The city in cooperation with the Army Corps of Engineers wants to design a levee that FEMA will approve as sufficient, once it is built, to remove the flood plain designation.

That will take time.

Trizna said construction is two years away. Before it starts, Joliet will seek a letter of map revision from FEMA assuring that construction of the levee will remove the flood plain.

“We’re not going to do the work,” Trizna said. “unless we know it’s going to pull us out of the flood plain.”