Construction Nightmare In Joliet's Downtown: 12 Photos

JOLIET —Welcome to downtown Joliet, home of the world's largest and most continuous street repair project? Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration, but it's not that far from reality. The summer of 2024 street repairs in downtown Joliet are like nothing the city has seen in years.

This week, the entire stretch of North Ottawa Street, the Route 53 semi-truck route, is closed to traffic. The whole thing. If you look around and walk the city's sidewalks, it seems like every construction company in the country is working in downtown Joliet, breaking apart the concrete streets as part of Joliet's plan to modernize the city's water mains.

Block after block, heavy machinery and dump trucks are occupying downtown Joliet.

The work has made it difficult —but not impossible — for motorists desiring to visit downtown Joliet right now. For tourists traveling across the United States on their Historic Route 66 pilgrimage, a visit to downtown Joliet's Historical Museum isn't exactly easy right now.

As you'll see in my photos below, one construction worker was banging his sledgehammer, one loud thump at a time on Tuesday afternoon, attempting to break apart Joliet's Ottawa Street, in front of John Bays' Catholic Charities Building, at the corner of Ottawa and Cass Streets.

According to Joliet's website, "the City is conducting an aggressive water main replacement program in order to remove failing, leaky pipes with a goal of reducing the city’s water loss to less than 10% as required by the City’s Lake Michigan allocation permit."

When will downtown Joliet's construction pains end? Will the millions and millions of orange construction barrels surrounding downtown Joliet ever go away?

Someday, perhaps. We'll have to wait and see.