Regional business leaders want green light for Illiana

Building the Illiana Expressway would bring an economic boom to the southern parts of Indiana's Lake and Illinois' Will counties as well as relieve congestion on the Borman Expressway, according to regional business leaders and community development groups.

"You'll see it bring a wave of opportunities for the residents and the businesses," said Ed Dernulc, executive director of the combined Crown Point and Merrillville Chambers of Commerce.

Economic development would center at the proposed road's interchanges as at does at the interchanges along Interstate 65, he said. Plus, the highway would combat overcrowding of the Borman, which will soon be overused again, and its traffic will be too much for the county to handle, Dernulc said.

Both Rick Klein, government affairs vice chairman for the Chicago Southland Chamber, and Ed Paesel, executive director of the South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association, said the proposed expressway would keep and expand the many logistics businesses in the region.

"We needed it yesterday," Klein said. "One of the strongest resources of the area is that we are a logistics hub for transportation across the country. It's a focal point for freight coming from east, west, north and south."

Despite the reconstruction of Interstate 80-94, there's increasing gridlock on the route between Indiana's border and near Joliet, he said.

"You can see the gridlock with truck traffic on I-80 going both east and west," Klein said. "More delays and more congestion increase cost and (affect) efficiency and have a deteriorating effect on one our area's leading industries. If we want to maintain our eminence in logistics, what better way than create a new route that can be used to move freight through the area."

South Suburban Mayors' Ed Paesel said the Illiana "will have a very positive effect in several different ways."

He contends the are expectations that in the next five years the Borman will be just as congested as before the recent lane reconstruction and widening.

Paesel, whose local mayors' group represents 42 communities and 650,000 residents of Chicago's south suburbs, also said the Illiana's benefit to the south part of the region is probably a little more direct.

"From a business development standpoint, if we can connect I-65-to I-394 to I-57 and I-55 and tie the intermodal centers south of Joliet with the proposed Crete intermodal site -- as well as the potential of the South Suburban airport -- the business development potential is enormous," Paesel said.

Speros A. Batistatos, president and CEO of the South Shore Visitors and Convention Authority, said the leaders of the region's biggest industries support the Illiana's construction.

"I haven't heard one of our members take a position against it," Batistatos said.

Their reasons for supporting the proposed road are a "mixed bag" of congestion relief and for economic development, he said.

"People recognize the bottleneck that is the Borman and how it completely shuts down in every crisis situation," Batistatos said. "But even more important, business and community leaders recognize it as a multi-hundred million dollar investment in the community that we'd be getting for free."

Plus, there is a "well proven" economic relationship between interstates and business, he said.

"All we have to do as Hoosiers is look across the state line and see what's happened along I-55, I-355 and I-88," Batistatos said. "Look at the growth and economic development along there."

And it won't have the adverse affects on small business along the route that free-access expressways can have, because the Illiana, as proposed, will have a limited number of exits and entrances, he said.

Beecher Village Administrator Bob Barber said his village supports the Illiana Expressway but currently isn't backing any specific route.

"If we can link I-57 to I-65, and I-65 to (I-) 55, we believe it will relieve a lot of diversionary traffic on the Borman," Barber said. "There are economic development benefits, but we don't believe it should be the reason to build the road. The roads need to stand by itself without economic development in the equation."

Bill Voss, vice chairman of the Beecher Chamber of Commerce and local small-business owner, said he doesn't know if the proposed road would be a benefit to the town.

"I don't know if it would bring more business," Voss said. "It'd be a shortcut. It may help to go into the city or out east and to other expressways and surely be a benefit for people traveling, but I don't think it will bring any more business to Beecher."

Diane Jostes, executive director of the Cedar Lake Chamber of Commerce, takes a different view.

"I feel it's definitely necessary and needed" she said. "It would absolutely be a benefit to the business community. A lot of people won't go on the Borman because of the traffic. It should be a plus to anyone in south county. It would open the area to new development and be a plus to our citizens and businesses that are here now."