The developer made a deal with the church that they would build extra spaces in their parking garage so that the church would not loose any parking capacity if they sold them the land. I think the church members were even supposed to get the best spaces in the garage. I wonder if they will be able to park their busses in the garage. The village parking garage is along the northwest wall of the construction. So if I go up to the fourth floor, I can get a good view of some of the construction. Another vantage point is on the east side of Washington. Although they installed a fence so that view is now harder to capture. Fortunately, my new camera has a tilt able viewscreen so that I can hold the camera over the fence.
The purpose of this post is to provide some context for my YouTube videos of this construction. I'm way behind in editing and uploading videos because my Industrial History and Towns and Nature blogs are of higher priority. But rather than fall further behind, I've decided to post the videos out of chronological order. I'll add a link in this post in the proper chronological position when I upload a video so that this post will end up being a chronological index of the videos.
The memory card had photos from a June 11 status of the St. Joe construction and today (June 24).
Today I visited several projects. Because of the miscellaneous nature of the contents, I'm indexing the photo folder with a post.
June 11 status of St. Joe They are done with the steel studs on the south side and have started adding drywall on the outside. And more plumbing has been done on the inside.
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They have been working several months now on an expansion of Downers Grove North High School. I was surprised that I didn't see much done. My wife explained that they have been doing a lot of work inside the old gym converting it to the new plan. The brown part on the right of this photo was the old gym.
I took various views as I walked East toward the new gym's entrance...
...and then South;
After I got back to Prince Street, I noticed a worker using a lift to access the top of the stairwell that is being torn down. That street cleaner was just driving up and down the street.
So I walked south on Prince to get a view from the south side.
On the way back to the car in the parking lot, I took an overview shot.
I've read about Downers Grove zoning allowing a single family home on a big lot being turned into five luxury townhouses. This is a view of the back (east) side.
It appears that each unit has parking for two cars. Downers Grove allowed some big residential projects to build with just 1.2 cars per unit.
It looks like the house next to Immanuel Residences that got torn down had a double lot. I knew these lots were deep because the back of the lots are next to the railroad tracks.
I noticed that a lot of single family homes on the south side of Gilbert have been torn down and turned into townhouses.
The signs on the fence advertising the new townhouses.
The townhouses south of Gilbert have two-car garages in the back and some additional parking behind the buildings.
The gates were down at Forest while the commuter was stopped at the station. When I tried to read the number of the engine, I discovered it was out of focus. The camera choose to focus on the tree instead of the train. My replacement lens has a manual focus feature. The manual explains two ways of doing manual focus. The way I thought I understood has not worked. I'm going to have to reread the manual and remember to override the focus for framed shots like this.
They have added another gate just for the sidewalk that is further away from the tracks.
BNSF should do left-hand running for the afternoon and evening trains like New Lenox does. This photo was taken a while after the train left, and the pile of commuters that got off in DG are still crossing the tracks. This crowd proceeds to jaywalk across Burlington Avenue. I almost hit a lady walking out between buses. She was looking at her phone the whole time. I managed to slam on the brakes before hitting her. She had no idea how close she came to being hit. She didn't even look up when I honked my horn!
I saw an inbound train was coming as I crossed. I ran to my car to drop what I got from the library than back to an open spot in the parking lot that is on the north side of the tracks. Here it is about to cross Forest. I should have taken a video to record how fast it was going even though it was going to stop just a couple of blocks from here.
It came to a stop well past the station. Commuters who were waiting at the station had to run along the platform to catch up to it.
I had seen other cottonwood trees in bloom so I went out of my way to take a photo of the "big one" north of Tivoli. Evidently the older trees bloom later.
Checking the status of the St. Joe construction. The outside drywall is done and they are painting it blue. My wife said they had painted just the framing around the windows before.
The "trailer" under the platform of the lift caught my eye. Given the cables on top, I assume it is a generator for arc welding. It has "National Wrecking Co" written on its side. Why would a wrecking company need an arc welder? And did this contractor buy it used and not bother to repaint it?
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