Storm damages downtown Joliet buildings, knocked down several trees

An exterior section of the Illinois Rock and Roll Museum on Route 66 was damaged in a freakish development during a storm that blew through downtown Joliet on Sunday morning.

The storm intensified when it reached the near West Side of the city, blowing down trees that blocked at least one section of Broadway Street, which also serves as Route 53, before doing more damage downtown.

High winds blew a sheet-metal structure that covered the HVAC system on top of the Joliet Junior College City Center Campus, 235 N. Chicago St., building into the roof of the Illinois Rock and Roll Museum on Route 66 before tumbling onto Cass Street.

The JJC building is located just north of the museum. The JJC City Center Campus will operate virtually on Monday, July 15 and Tuesday, July 16 due to building damage. All other JJC campuses will operate normally, according to a statement released from JJC Sunday.

The wind-blown mass of metal apparently scraped the roof of the museum before crashing through a section of the decorative top facade of the 1930-built building.

“It got bombarded by the JJC roof,” museum Executive Director Ron Romero said Sunday at the scene of the damage.

The building otherwise remained intact and no museum artifacts were damaged, Romero said. But he was making arrangements to move artifacts out of the building while repairs are made.

“There are significant holes in the roof,” he said. “The facade is damaged quite a bit.”

Water from the rain was leaking into the building, he said.

The museum, which opened in late 2023 after years of work to get the building ready for the public, will be closed as repairs are made.

One note of relief is that Gigantar, the 24-foot tall guitar sculpture hanging on the front of the museum, was missed somehow.

“When I got the call, I thought it hit our guitar in the front,” Romero said. “It was untouched.”

[ Photos: Storm blows through Joliet causing damage ]

The sheet metal also broke glass on the front of The Forge, a nightclub across Cass Street from the museum, when it landed.

Those three buildings are the only structures known to have been damaged by the storm, said Joliet Emergency Management Agency Coordinator Greg Blaskey.

“It is the weekend,” Blaskey added. “So, people may notice things when they come into work on Monday.”

Blaskey said storm damage was confined a northwest section of the city that ran roughly from Six Corners on the west to St. Joseph’s Park on the north to downtown on the east and neighborhoods just south of downtown.

Even with sections of Cass and Chicago streets closed downtown for the cleanup, the impact was relatively minimal compared to what could have happened on a week day, Blaskey said.

“I think we were spared in that no one was in harm’s way from such a large structure falling on Cass Street,” he said.

The area of Cass Street during the week typically is busy with traffic but is quiet on Sunday mornings. No cars were hit by the falling sheet metal.

The storm did have an impact on Broadway Street, where semitrailers traveling the section of Route 53 were blocked by a tree that fell across the road.

Motorists in passenger cars improvised, using the parking lot for the Broadway Greenway parking lot with entrances on both sides of the fallen tree as a detour to get around it.

Tree limbs lined Broadway Street on Sunday morning.

At one house on Broadway near Marble Street, a fallen tree and a traffic signal had been blown onto a car parked in the driveway.

The city issued a news release saying road crews from the Public Works Department had been mobilized to clear the roadways.

Greg Ruddy, director of Public Works for the City of Joliet, announced Sunday night that streets are expected to be fully cleared by Monday morning. “Crews are continuing to clear debris from the roads. All roadways we are aware of have been or will be cleared by the morning,” Ruddy said.

Residents are urged to report any debris on the streets to the roadways division at 815-724-3650. For further storm updates, visit the city’s website at www.joliet.gov.