IRMA's Featured Retailer
We Are Retail: M.D. Trains
M.D. Trains in downtown Woodstock is a full-service hobby shop owned by Matt Drennan, offering model trains, cars, and collectibles for hobbyists of all ages.
The store has become a welcoming community hub for those with a passion for railroading and model building. From vintage finds to modern supplies, M.D. Trains has it all for nostalgic and creative collectors.
Sponsored Content
-
MAR 17, 2020
Poll workers process voters Monday at the Loop Super site. [Heather Cherone/The Daily Line]
At least some Illinois voters will head to the polls Tuesday amid a global pandemic that has altered nearly every aspect of life in Illinois, with schools, bars, restaurants and casinos shut down for the foreseeable future.
-
MAR 16, 2020
Aldermen are set on Monday to approve a South Side cannabis cultivation site and to give a Southwest Side dispensary the green light to expand, further boosting Chicago’s nascent weed industry.
-
MAR 16, 2020
Mayor Lori Lightfoot will ask the Chicago City Council to allow as many employees to work from home as possible and to expand the city’s sick leave policies as officials take emergency actions to attempt to stop the spread of coronavirus.
-
The former South Shore High School, 7627 S. Constance Ave.
MAXWELL EVANS/BLOCK CLUB CHICAGO
The vacant site of a former Chicago public high school is one vote away becoming a temporary police training facility.
The City Council Committee on Housing and Real Estate endorsed the plan (O2019-1535) that would allow the city to lease the closed South Shore High School building from Chicago Public Schools. The building is located at 7627 S. Constance Ave. in the 8th Ward.
Police would use the building to teach “use of force and de-escalation strategies,” Ald. Michelle Harris (8) wrote in a Facebook post on Saturday. The training program is aimed at fulfilling reforms required under the consent decree placed on the department by a federal judge last year.
Harris wrote that police would occupy the building “for the next two to three years,” but the lease agreement up for consideration on Friday would last until Sept. 30, 2028.
The unanimous vote came at a shortened meeting of the Housing Committee amid the growing spread of the coronavirus, also known as COVID-19. A final vote is set at the meeting of the full City Council meeting on Wednesday.
Concerns about the virus prompted the cancelation of the Health and Human Relations Committee that had been scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. Friday.
The building has been vacant since 2014, when its operations were moved to the newer South Shore International College Preparatory High School, 1955 E. 75th St. Neighbors told Block Club Chicago they were not consulted on the plan.
Officials first aired the proposal to sign the building over to police last spring, but the plan was put on ice amid opposition from neighbors and the Chicago Teachers Union.
Union President Jesse Sharkey called the idea “a slap in the face of the community.”
Union leaders and activists blasted Mayor Lori Lightfoot last spring when she suggested that city leaders repurpose closed schools as police training facilities.
Aldermen also endorsed Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s proposed shake-up of the board of directors that oversees the city’s Low-Income Housing Trust Fund, a publicly-administered non-profit organization that oversees subsidies for approximately 3,200 housing units around the city.
The committee also approved the remaining items in The Daily Line’s preview. -
MAR 13, 2020
The vacant site of a former Chicago public high school would become a police training facility under a proposal set to come before aldermen on Friday. The former South Shore High School, 7627 S. Constance Ave. [MAXWELL EVANS/BLOCK CLUB CHICAGO]
-
Aldermen advanced the first round of funding on Thursday for Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Invest South/West initiative, the centerpiece of her efforts to reverse decades of disinvestment on Chicago’s South and West sides.
Ald. Leslie Hairston (5) tells reporters she was "insulted" by a provision of the mayor's proposal. [Heather Cherone/The Daily Line]
-
MAR 13, 2020
Former Cook County Comm. Richard Boykin turned heads in January when he promised during a candidate forum that, if he were elected as the next clerk of the county’s courts, he would forgive millions of dollars in debt owed to the county’s court system.
The candidates for Cook County Circuit Court Clerk debate. [Don Vincent/The Daily Line]
-
MAR 13, 2020
Aldermen laid into leaders of Peoples Gas on Thursday for racking up costs on its pipe replacement program and sticking customers with the bill.
Ald. George Cardenas (12) blasted People's Gas for hiking residents' bills. [Heather Cherone/The Daily Line]
-
Aldermen are scheduled to consider a non-binding resolution Friday that calls for the creation of a commission to study how to compensate the descendants of enslaved Americans.
-
MAR 12, 2020
Voting by mail is a good way for voters to limit potential exposure to Coronavirus, or COVID-19. But voting early in person is better, election officials said Wednesday.
The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners has logged 90,020 applications for mail-in ballots, Chair Marisel Hernandez told reporters. [Alex Nitkin/The Daily Line]
-
Aldermen are set to turn up the heat on Peoples Gas Thursday over high natural gas prices at a hearing designed to pressure lawmakers to rein in the utility’s pipe replacement program.
-
The familiar clip-clop of hooves echoing along Downtown streets may soon become a thing of the past, as the Chicago City Council is one step away from banning horse-drawn carriages.
-
Aldermen will weigh four appointments that could jumpstart the city’s $100 million Catalyst investment fund, which has yet to make a single investment in the more than three years since it was approved by the Chicago City Council.
-
Ald. Greg Mitchell (7).
Aldermen reluctantly approved on Tuesday a tax break to renovate the former City Colleges of Chicago headquarters, blasting the lack of information about how many Black- and Latino-owned firms will be part of the $137 million project.
-
Legislation that would put an elected board of Chicago residents in charge of the Chicago Police Department stalled Tuesday amid a dispute between Mayor Lori Lightfoot and her hand-picked Public Safety Committee chair over how policy should be set for the police department.
