Want to speed up a road or transit project? Just host a political convention

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Chicago officials had planned to reopen a long-shuttered elevated train station near the United Center more than four years ago, but numerous delays left some neighbors wondering if it ever would happen.

Then the Democratic National Committee picked the city to host its convention.

Construction crews scrambled to finish work this month on the Damen green line L stop before delegates arrived, with most of the high-profile events set for the home of the Bulls and Blackhawks less than a half-mile away. Featuring such flourishes as wooden ceilings, a colorful mural and a glass pedestrian walkway overlooking the Chicago skyline, the new station fills a 1.5-mile (2.4-kilometer) service gap created when a previous stop there closed in 1948.

“It was on target to get done, but the DNC made it quicker,” said Alderman Walter Burnett, who spent years lobbying for the project for his West Side City Council ward. “That helped a lot, and I loved it.”

Cities might factor the ability to host major events when prioritizing infrastructure upgrades, but rarely do they embark on big-ticket projects just to land a political convention or woo its delegates. Speeding up construction, however, is another matter.

Victor Matheson, economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, co-authored a study that concluded the economic expectations for hosting national political conventions are often “unrealistically large.” Still, he said, there’s “a lot of political will” to accelerate already planned upgrades to impress out-of-town guests — even for an event that lasts just four days.

“The real question with these sort of things is, if this is such a good project, why wasn’t the political will there before?” Matheson said.

After the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, officials there concluded the event directly generated $214 million for the local economy. But more than half the amount cited was for telecommunications upgrades the city would have eventually needed anyway, Matheson said.

Milwaukee hosted last month’s Republican National Convention and the pandemic-altered 2020 Democratic National Convention without any significant public infrastructure investments directly tied to them, city engineer Kevin Muhs said. However, it did adjust the timing of some road projects earlier this year in anticipation of a citywide construction halt during the RNC.

One of Milwaukee's most politically divisive infrastructure projects is the streetcar known as The Hop, which expanded service to the lakefront earlier this year over objections from some Republicans who argued it was a waste of money. But part of the city’s agreement with the Republican National Committee to host the convention stipulated that the service would be open for delegates to use, Muhs said.

Landing the 2016 Republican National Convention was a major reason Cleveland accelerated construction on overdue airport upgrades, a large downtown park called Public Square and a hotel attached to the convention center, said David Gilbert, who served as CEO of the local host committee.

“It was a city that had gone through decades of hard times and was coming back,” Gilbert said, citing the nearly 15,000 members of the national media that descended on Cleveland for the RNC. “It was a great way to show we were ready to host this sort of thing.”

Many of the upgrades were already in place a month earlier when the Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Golden State Warriors for their first NBA championship, with home games in the same arena. And the spruced-up downtown was back on the national stage once again that fall with the World Series, which the Cleveland Indians lost in Game 7 to the visiting Chicago Cubs.

During the news conference and ribbon-cutting at the new Chicago L station, officials made only passing references to the Democratic National Convention and instead focused on the transit help for underserved residents on the South and West sides.

Still, Mayor Brandon Johnson concluded his remarks with a nod to the convention, proclaiming that Chicago was “ready to host the world ... so this station comes at a perfect time.”

Commuters Take Action, a group that advocates for more reliable transit options in Chicago, called it “a little sad that it took the hosting of the DNC instead of the everyday needs of Chicagoans to get this project across the finish line.” However, the group’s statement celebrated the station’s opening and encouraged visitors to use transit during the convention and push for more funding on a national level.

Some residents who took the train out of the Damen station on its first day wondered just how influential the convention was in moving up the grand opening.

“I feel like it shouldn’t be the main fuel for projects like this. It should be the communities and the people who live in them,” rider Angelica Arzuaga said. “But I guess it’s a win-win.”