Labor
City, Downtown Businesses Prepare For Possible Work Delays During NATO Summit
By ANDY COLE A ninth-season episode of South Park features Eric Cartman bravely ridding his Colorado town of “hippies” by constructing a vehicle to tunnel through them at a music festival. You’ll have to forgive some downtown businesses if they were looking for the blueprints to that vehicle when plans to hold the G8 and NATO summits in Chicago came together, promising to bring with them the massive throng of protestors that have followed those conferences everywhere else they’ve been. While the pressure has been relieved a bit with the announcement that the G8 Summit will move to Camp David, the NATO meeting is still on for May 20-21, which should cause delays on downtown construction sites. It will be the first NATO Summit in the United States since 1999, and the first time ever the event has been held in an American city other than Washington, D.C. Political and First Amendment conversations aside, what does this mean to Chicago’s construction industry as a number of highprofile projects start or continue in the area? Short answer: At least a few days off. The City and summit welcoming committee do not have a plan to compensate businesses that may need to close due to NATO’s visit, stating that everyone should still be open and it shouldn’t be an issue. Mayor Rahm Emanuel believes the positives of the
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visit will outweigh the negatives both to business and the City, and spokespersons from multiple levels of City government have stated that they don’t believe business will be disrupted significantly. As pie-in-the-sky as that sounds, it’s a bit closer to the reality of what Pittsburgh experienced when it hosted the G20 in 2009 than the other extreme. “There was very minor damage and nobody tried to break in to any of the sites, as far as we could tell,” said Jack Ramage, Executive Director of the Master Builders Association of Western Pennsylvania, about the jobsites in the area at that time. “It didn’t have a big impact on construction, but you have to keep in mind that it was 2009 and the downturn had started. There wasn’t all that much construction work going on, anyway. “We did have some contractors move their most reliable tradespeople somewhere else to work for a few days. It looked a lot worse than it ended up being and wasn’t what I would call disruptive.” That’s not to say it wouldn’t have caused problems if the Master Builders and its members hadn’t planned ahead. Work in the area of the conference was fenced off entirely with boarding and temporary structures put in place. There was no specific work provision in the contracts dealing with the missed time due to the G20, but Master Builders worked with trade chiefs to help them understand that – had a contractor tried to work – there’d have been no way to get to the area. That experience stands in stark contrast to Toronto’s G20 in 2010, with its images of police cruisers being set on fire and an estimated 500 arrests. Those differences make it difficult to know what to expect, but at the very least congestion will eliminate access to jobsites during those days. In the meantime, much like Pittsburgh, Chicago’s contractors have planned ahead and are trying to be ready for anything. “The project owners are concerned, I think rightly so, but it’s nothing we can’t prepare for,” said Lou Reiner of W.E. O’Neil Construction, which is working at Columbia College before and after the conference. “Before the conference, the head canopy has to come down completely, and we’ll just put it back up a couple of days after it’s over and resume work. It’s something the owner knew we were going to have to do before we started, so it was built into the schedule. “Taking down the canopy should lessen the chance of vandalism to the property. The owner purchased a lot of plywood and 2-by4’s just in case, and I’m sure everyone who owns a business down there has done that. We’re taking proper precautions and should be ready to go again very soon after the conference.” In January, Chicago’s Aldermen approved the Mayor’s plan to increase fines for violating parade restrictions, aimed at protestors for both summits before the G8 left town. Reports on how many protestors should be expected vary widely, with police in training for the event being told to anticipate up to 40,000.