County Decides Against Building Cass Avenue Median

A blizzard raged in January on the night Brookhaven Plaza business owners first met with DuPage County representatives about a . 

The stormy weather mirrored the anxiety inside that evening as the merchants spoke about how a median that prevented left turns into the plaza would hurt their businesses. 

What a difference three months make. 

Spring sun shown brightly Thursday evening as the Brookhaven merchants welcomed the news that the county had decided against constructing the median. 

“I am ecstatic,” said merchant association President Dan Widener, who also owns . “We are just jumping for joy.” 

During the past three months, the county did a traffic study along Cass Avenue between Plainfield Road and 75th Street that refuted its original theories about the block, County Engineer Chris Snyder said.

The county initially projected that in 20 years, cars trying to make left-hand turns from Cass onto 75th Street would back up past the drive into the plaza that’s halfway down the block. It could pose a safety hazard if cars tried to make a left-hand turn into the plaza midway through that line of other left-turners, Snyder said in January.

Shop owners said, however, that a median blocking left-hand turns into the plaza would devastate their businesses. 

“It would kill us,” said Georgia Tsakalakis, owner of . 

Over the course of this winter’s study, the county spent 12-hour days monitoring the flow of traffic in and out of the plaza, as well as analyzing traffic data obtained from the . 

“We were somewhat surprised,” Snyder said.

On average, more than 400 cars entered and more than 600 exited the plaza through the driveway each day, he said. There were few backups, and on the occasion traffic got congested, Snyder said most drivers were courteous enough to allow others to squeeze into the lane. The number of accidents was similar to other Darien intersections.

All that data showed that a barrier median wouldn’t be necessary, Snyder said.

“I’m so happy it’s turned out this way,” Tsakalakis said. “I’m sure everyone is. We could not ask for more.”

The county is still going to renovate Cass Avenue in the immediate area of 75th Street as part of its 75th Street widening project, Snyder said. But once construction is complete, Cass will look virtually the same as it does now. 

There will be a few minor adjustments: The county plans to lengthen the left-turn lane onto 75th Street to about 400 feet. The drive into Brookhaven will likely shift farther south. 

Throughout construction, Snyder said the county will try to maintain at least one lane open in either direction. He said he expects the project to begin in 2014 and last through at least one construction season, which stretches from March to October. Initial estimates put construction costs about $15 million, he said.

Ultimately, eliminating the medians is a solution that makes everyone happy, Sndyer said.

"(The business owners) were right," he said. "There aren't big queue or access concerns here. The data helped drive the decision to modify the median project."