Some residents of a northwest Chicago neighborhood block are fighting to preserve a massive pothole, according to reports.
The pothole is right in an intersection on Logan Square, CBS News reported. Although dubbed an eyesore by some, the weeks-old, roughly 16-by-16-foot pothole has many supporters.
“We welcome this. We would like more in the neighborhood,” resident Martha Jungers told CBS News, adding that there were “a lot of kids who like to take off like this is a speedway or something.”
“I think it’s a good thing,” resident Emmanuel Ortega told the outlet. “It’s helping people slow down.”
Speeding is a longstanding problem on the block, residents say. Drivers also love to cut through the intersection when coming off or going on nearby Fullerton Avenue. Stop signs have negligible effect on traffic control around the intersection. So when the pothole appeared early September, an online campaign to #SaveTheHole surfaced.
There also were no fewer than two drive-by shootings in the area in the summer of 2023, residents told CBS News.
The pothole is the start of a traffic circle that the Illinois Department of Transportation will build because of mounting road safety concerns, a spokesperson for the office of 35th Ward Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa told CBS News.
The traffic circle should be finished by mid-October, the outlet reported. (RELATED: Video Shows Massive 100-Foot-Wide Sinkhole Swallowing Soccer Field)
A traffic circle is coming to Belden and St. Louis avenues, but one neighbor says he’s fine with a giant hole in the street and hopes to #SaveTheHole. Others? Not so much.https://t.co/9J0XMK26WV
— Ariel Parrella (@ArielParrella) September 25, 2024
“For me, it’s exciting just to see a hole,” resident Michael Burton told local outlet Block Club Chicago. “In the last 23 years, since I’ve been in Logan Square, we’ve lost a bit of that grit … [The city is] asking the drivers to go slow; I’d like to ask the city to go slow in repaving it.”
Burton — who started the #SaveTheHole campaign — saw the pothole as an inexpensive traffic control measure and would rather the city spend on housing and other amenities.
The traffic circle will cost about $14,090, Ramirez-Rosa’s deputy chief-of-staff told the outlet.
Another resident, identified as Matt, preferred the traffic circle since he said he saw a school bus get stuck in the hole.
An even more famous Chicagoan pothole was one shaped like a rat in Roscoe Village. Chicago’s government removed and kept the sidewalk slab containing the hole in April, CBS Chicago reported.
