Quantum campus project raises questions about residents’ agency in community development
In Steelworkers Park, butterflies and dragonflies flit around native plants and flowers that have grown waist-high. Public art and concrete ore walls stand tall, telling visitors the U.S. Steel South Works left an indelible environmental footprint during the last industrial age.
Now, a trek through the area means looking and listening to construction on the $9 billion Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park, a 440-acre development on the old mill site that began last fall to much fanfare, adjacent to Steelworkers Park.
At the groundbreaking ceremony, Gov. JB Pritzker touted the project as a magnet for jobs and economic investment. California-based PsiQuantum agreed to be the campus’s anchor tenant and other tech firms, including IBM and those funded by the federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), will also establish operations there.
But after months of talking with Southeast Side community and grass-roots organizations seeking more transparency, Chicago-based podcasters and Respair Media co-founders Damon Williams and Daniel Kissingler found another point of view.
“The coalition of government, private industry and academia behind this project says that it has the capacity to solve unsolvable problems, but we’ve learned that it also has the potential to displace communities, damage our environment and destroy digital privacy as we know it,” Williams said.
Even though Illinois officials like Pritzker are excited about the prospect of the state becoming a leader in computing technologies, coalitions of residents and activists are pushing back, citing concerns about increased water and electricity, regulation, sound pollution, infrastructure, digital privacy and extra surveillance.
Williams and Kisslinger’s goal for their multimedia investigative feature, “Quantum Entanglements,” is to ensure the public has a 360-degree view of the development and the quantum technology behind it.
Although the plans include a hospital, a 128-acre quantum computing facility and office space, there is little clarity about what will ultimately be on the quantum campus, Kissingler said. And while there is a vision for what the campus will be, there isn’t yet a full blueprint for the site, he added, leaving area residents nervous.
Anne Holcomb, a South Shore resident and self-proclaimed “citizen scientist,” said the community was not invited to the quantum campus ceremony. “We were never asked what we wanted for that land. … We were in the dark and then it’s thrown at us. How do you think we’re going to feel?” Holcomb said.
She shared her experience during the 65-minute podcast, in which Williams and Kissingler discuss the quantum campus’s origins, potential harms and unanswered questions surrounding the site. The podcast highlights the lack of transparency around the project and the ambiguity surrounding the technology.
“That’s been the problem the whole time,” said Holcomb, a community organizer and co-chair of ETHOS (Environment, Transportation, Health, and Open Space). Based on the South and Southeast sides, the grass-roots environmental justice group is leading a push for a community benefits agreement at the site. The right way to do urban planning is to meet with the community very early on, Holcomb said.
Since plans for the quantum campus were announced in the summer of 2024, opinions on the development have been, like the community it will inhabit, diverse. Kisslinger and Williams point to ETHOS and several other local advocacy groups organizing campaigns, including the Alliance for the Southeast and Southside Together.
Southeast Neighbors for Quantum supports the quantum campus. Southside Together wants to stop it. And while ETHOS does not want to kill the development, Holcomb said, a coalition of advocacy groups is pushing developers to secure binding agreements on community concerns such as environmental and housing protections, jobs for residents and investments in area schools and parks. Holcomb sees the agreement as a harm-reduction strategy.
The conflict around the quantum campus is not unique. Much of this tension arises around megadevelopments in general, according to Antonio Lopez, co-director of the Chicago Frontlines Fund, which provides grants to grass-roots environmental justice initiatives. Lopez pointed to other city developments, such as Lincoln Yards, the implosion of a 380-foot chimney at the former Crawford Power Generating Station in Little Village, and The 78 development near Chinatown. The developing quantum park falls among these.
“It continues that long pattern that’s happened in the city in a lot of neighborhoods,” Lopez said. “There’s a lot of old wounds and a lot of distrust. These are very big projects that have a lot at stake, not just for these individual neighborhoods, but as to what Chicago’s going to look like in 10 years. Are people going to be able to afford to live here anymore? There’s a lot happening right now, and we appreciate the work that Respair is doing to raise awareness and explain complicated things in an accessible way.”
Lopez’s fund provided a grant for the completion of that “Quantum Entanglements” project.
“After numerous attempts to develop the site with mixed-income housing and other commercial development, the feeling of ‘there’s something where there has been nothing,’ is very alluring,” Kisslinger said. “But what that something is really matters. It has to be ‘Is the thing we’re bringing in to fill the void going to actually be able to meet our needs?'”
Those needs include a community-accessible credit union on the site, as well as public restrooms and water fountains at the adjacent Steelworkers Park.
While the park’s amenities aren’t as robust as others, it still meets a community need for public space, Kissingler said.
Williams said issues around quantum technology narrow down to issues of self-determination and displacement.
“The ways in which communities can or cannot shape their environment, respond to harms and hazards in a way that is democratic, or respects the autonomy of people’s lived experience,” he said. “Bringing in developments that are not in line with the economic base of the community are other ways that displacement can occur.”
“Quantum Entanglements” was released in July after 16 months of research. The latest work was funded in collaboration with the Alliance Matters campaign, an initiative of Chicago Independent Media Alliance (CIMA) and the Field Foundation. The project is available in print, video and audio (with a listening guide).
“A lot of what’s happening now feels very top down for a lot of people,” Lopez said. “We want to democratize that. We think it’s better if community members in these neighborhoods have a say on the types of development happening in their local areas.”
Since Kisslinger and Williams interviewed Holcomb over a year ago for “Quantum Entanglements,” ETHOS has held monthly dialogues with developer Related Midwest and the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. ETHOS volunteers monitor the site regularly to ensure the developer is doing the work responsibly.
As work continues, special fencing and street cleaning are measures to mitigate dust and dirt kicked up during construction and remediation, and to prevent soil transferred from truck tires from reaching public roads.
ETHOS has initiated discussions with the developers about housing, parks and education. They have yet to meet about jobs, Holcomb said.
“We’re making some headway,” Holcomb said. “They are working with us. It takes time and ideally we would get a signed document, but if the work gets done, the work gets done.”