Good morning, Chicago. ✶
🔎 Below: A network of 277 monitors keeping tabs on air quality in Chicago’s neighborhoods faces its first summer, when pollution tends to worsen.
🗞️ Plus: Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart considers a unified transit police force, teens share their perspective on “takeovers” with City Council and more news you need to know.
📝 Keeping score: The Cubs beat the Mets, 10-3; the White Sox fell to the Guardians, 4-3; the Sky bested the Fire, 101-78.
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⏱️: A 7-minute read
TODAY’S WEATHER 🌤️
Mostly sunny with a high near 79.
TODAY’S TOP STORY 🔎
Air pollution, often worse in Chicago’s summer, can now be monitored by neighborhood
By Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco
The air up there: Chicago is now home to the nation’s largest community air quality monitoring network. There are 277 air monitors collecting air pollution data from every ward and community area, with special emphasis on those already overburdened by pollution.
Why care about air?: The monitors are part of a five-year project called Open Air Chicago that went live last fall. They’re designed to collect data that can show Chicagoans real-time pollution figures, which can help officials develop guidance for permitting, urban planning and air quality control.
Upcoming test: The network is about to be put to the test as it faces its first Chicago summer — the season when air pollution tends to worsen, with sunlight and warm temperatures cooking emissions already in the air and forming ground-level ozone. That smog can worsen the air when paired with wildfire smoke. Experts say these conditions are exacerbated by climate change.
TRANSPORTATION 🚆
Unified transit police force is ‘easiest’ option but could be costly, Sheriff Dart says
By David Struett
Transit task force: Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart’s office typically doesn’t deal with public transit, but his deputies have begun patrolling CTA trains to address stubbornly high violence — making hundreds of arrests and issuing thousands of warnings in the last two and a half months. Dart is personally leading a task force that will decide whether to recommend creating a unified police force to patrol the CTA, Metra and Pace.
Sheriff’s POV: Creating a new police force would be among the largest changes to how transit operates in Chicago. But it’s early in the process, and Dart says there’s a lot of talking to do before his working group makes a recommendation to the new Northern Illinois Transit Authority, which was created under the state’s newly enacted transit law. It would take a lot of money. And Dart is worried about runaway costs he’s seen in Los Angeles, which recently formed its own transit police force.
Bottom line: Whatever the task force recommends, Dart is clear that it won’t be the current system in which policing is split between Metra police, Chicago police on CTA, and many suburban police departments responding to Pace.
ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN 📐
Neglected Frank Lloyd Wright house on West Side sells for $125,000 to nonprofit
By Lee Bey
New buyer: A dilapidated Frank Lloyd Wright house that has needed a savior for the past 30 years has found one at last — right in its own backyard. The nonprofit community group Austin Coming Together announced Wednesday that it bought the vacant J.J. Walser Jr. House, 42 N. Central Ave., for $125,000.
Key context: Built in 1903, the buff-colored wood-and-stucco Prairie School design is among a set of circa 1900 residences along Central Avenue that mark Austin’s early years as a Chicago neighborhood.
The plan: Austin Coming Together Executive Director Darnell Shields says the organization and the community want to make the home a place where visitors can learn about the neighborhood’s architecture, culture and history. Shields said it could take at least $3 million to rehab and restore the house, a protected city landmark.
MORE NEWS YOU NEED 🗞️
- Teens take over City Hall: A group of Chicago teenagers testified Wednesday at City Hall about so-called teen takeovers, imploring City Council members to think beyond curfew ordinances. But many on the Council subcommittee addressing the issue were absent.
- New mayoral candidate: Accusing Mayor Brandon Johnson of dividing Chicago and “alienating and demonizing” its business community, Chicago Housing Authority Operating Chair Matthew Brewer on Thursday joined the race for mayor.
- After SAVE ends: By July 1, borrowers need to select a new student loan repayment plan if they don’t want to end up on a more expensive plan by default. Here’s what you need to know.
- Bell Works Chicagoland almost ready: Construction at the former AT&T research complex is moving ahead with its second phase, which includes more office and retail space as well as an outdoor bar, indoor turf field and public lounge.
- Native greensnakes at risk: A recent study found toxins from polluted soil are sometimes seeping into the eggs of smooth greensnakes, the tiny, nonvenomous reptiles native to Illinois and Midwestern prairies.
- New OPC tickets: The Obama Presidential Center’s museum tickets have sold out through September due to high demand, but the next batch of tickets will be made available to the public in early July.
LET’S HEAR FROM YOU 🗣️
Calling all motorists who’ve endured traffic congestion on the Kennedy Expressway over the past three years!
Have you experienced long delays since the Illinois Department of Transportation launched its Kennedy rehabilitation in spring 2023?
An ongoing WBEZ/Sun-Times investigation is examining the Kennedy reconstruction’s planning, timing and costs — in taxpayers’ dollars and motorists’ time — throughout the multiyear project.
ON WBEZ 91.5 FM 📻
In the Loop with Sasha-Ann Simons, 9 a.m.
- Housing legislation: On Tuesday, Congress passed a bipartisan housing reform package. Allison Clements of Illinois Housing Council, Bob Palmer of Housing Action Illinois and Geoff Smith of DePaul University’s Institute for Housing Studies discuss.
- Chicago sues Airbnb: WBEZ’s Esther Yoon-Ji Kang talks about what the lawsuit could mean for Airbnb hosts and renters as well as for the future of short-term rentals in the city.
Say More with Mary Dixon and Patrick Smith, 10 a.m.
- America at 250: In its latest project, StoryCorps is recording conversations between Americans to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday. Series founder Dave Isay and callers weigh in.
FROM THE PRESS BOX 🏀⚾🏒
- NBA Draft: While the second round didn’t answer the Bulls’ outside-shooting questions, new executive vice president of basketball operations Bryson Graham made it clear he was aware of holes on the roster, writes Joe Cowley.
- Sky suit details: Unredacted versions of an investor’s complaint against Sky principal owner Michael Alter, as well as his motion to dismiss, have been unsealed.
- Steve Greenberg on the Cubs: Now the Cubs’ Dansby Swanson is hitting everything. Any chance he can pitch, too?
- Byram belief: Bowen Byram believes he can become a No. 1 defenseman, and the Blackhawks need him to be right.
CHICAGO MINI CROSSWORD 🌭
Today’s clue: 2D: ‘The ___’ (Chicago-set show whose final season premieres today)
BRIGHT ONE 🔆
As ‘The Bear’ ends, it still draws crowds to real-world restaurants featured on screen
By Courtney Kueppers
Teddy Gales stood at the front of a big, sleek coach bus on a recent Saturday and proclaimed, “We’re going to go to Mr. Beef … Do we have everyone?”
The 25 hungry out-of-towners and suburbanites responded in unison, “Yes, chef.”
It was the beginning of a three-and-a-half-hour food tour inspired by FX’s hit, the Chicago-set kitchen dramedy “The Bear,” which returns this week with its final season.
Gales, a 32-year-old actor, comedian and overall Chicago enthusiast, wore a white T-shirt, jeans and blue apron, the same getup donned by Jeremy Allen White’s character, “Carmy.”
Since the show debuted in 2022, it has both delighted and annoyed local viewers. Spotting actors as they filmed across town and seeing Chicago restaurants featured on screen became a sort of shared ritual, as has scrutinizing any detail that felt disingenuous. But whether you love it or hate it, the seismic impact of “The Bear” feels undeniable.
Chicago Food and City Tours debuted this outing in 2023 and, like the show itself, it has consistently been a hit. “This is a tour that ruins dinner plans. In a good way,” said Gales, who’s been a guide for three summers running.
The fifth and final season of “The Bear” premieres Thursday.
YOUR DAILY QUESTION ☕️
What Chicago restaurant would you make the setting for a new TV show? Tell us why.
Respond to this newsletter via email (please include your first and last name). We may run your answer in a future newsletter or story.
PICTURE CHICAGO 📸
Metra senior graphic designer Felecia Woods stands after unveiling the American 250 anniversary locomotive at the Western Avenue Coach Yard on Wednesday.
Jeremy Battle/Sun-Times
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Written and curated by: Matt Moore
Editor: Eydie Cubarrubia
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