ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Revitalizing the Southland

A Rust Belt region jump-starts its economic turnaround by building a middle-mile fiber network.

By Masha Zager / Broadband Communities

tretching southward from Chicago for some 40 miles through Cook and Will counties is a Scollection of cities and villages known as the Chicago Southland. Traditionally blue-collar and industrial, the area suffered the dislocations typical of the entire Rust Belt as steel mills and other heavy industry disappeared. Some closer-in suburbs became popular with metro area residents priced out of Chicago’s With the help of a $190,000 state northern suburbs and fared relatively well. The village of grant, SSMMA contracted with the Tinley Park, for example, was designated the “best place Broadband Development Group of in America to raise kids” by BloombergBusinessweek Northern University (NIU) in 2009 because of its good schools, accessibility to to determine what type of broadband Chicago and relatively affordable housing. This year, the infrastructure the area needed. NIU village of Homewood ranked third in CNN Money’s list broadband consultant Rusty Winchel of best places to live where homes are affordable. notes that he was originally asked Other parts of the Southland were harder hit by job to investigate community wireless losses and widespread mortgage foreclosures. After the broadband. However, he says, “We housing market collapse, southern Cook County had the brought in data that showed residential highest foreclosure rate in Illinois; some communities users and small to midsized businesses could not even keep up with maintenance and code were well served, but anyone who enforcement on abandoned homes. Many commercial needed more than a couple of megabits properties are still vacant today. per second was not. We strongly pushed Forty-two cities and villages in the Southland fiber infrastructure with a gigabit or more of connectivity, and we identified participate in a regional organization, the South 450 locations, including 175 schools, Suburban Mayors and Managers Association (SSMMA), that needed that kind of connectivity.” through which they work cooperatively on the region’s pressing issues – economic development, transportation, A Fiber Network land use, infrastructure, public safety, housing and Is Launched more. By the mid-2000s, SSMMA realized that poor As a result of NIU’s study, the broadband infrastructure was a limiting factor in the association determined that the Southland, discouraging institutions and businesses Southland needed a regional fiber optic from locating or expanding there. network and began applying for grants.

20 | BROADBAND COMMUNITIES | www.broadbandcommunities.com | August/September 2013 Photo by Larry Pyrzunski

John Burns Construction workers install fiber optic cable across the street from Monee Village Hall.

The Illinois Department of Commerce Cook County Bureau of Technology), and health information exchanges. In and Economic Opportunity invested once construction is completed, addition, the network will pass many $6.1 million through the Illinois Jobs SSMMA will turn over the network to a K-12 schools and will be able to bid for Now! program, and Cook County separate not-for-profit entity, also called E-Rate funding to serve some of those redirected $10 million to the network Chicago Southland Fiber Network. schools. Winchel notes that many area from other projects to match the state The network’s backbone runs along school districts “are very disadvantaged grant. In April 2012, the Chicago the I-57 highway south from Chicago. and have poor access to any Internet Southland Fiber Network (CSFN) Laterals will run from the backbone service at all.” project got underway. to municipal government offices, CSFN will also connect to other Several contractors were hired for public safety sites, community colleges, state and national networks, including the project: NIU continues to provide economic development sites, hospitals the Illinois Century Network (ICN), a planning and consulting support, Globetrotters Engineering Corporation performs design and engineering, John Burns Construction Company is responsible for the construction and Chicago Southland G4S Technology provides operations Fiber Network Vendors and maintenance services. The primary equipment vendor is Ciena. Ciena www.ciena.com Connectivity services for the anchor G4S Technology www.g4stechnology.com institutions will be provided by a third- Globetrotters Engineering Corporation www.gec-group.com party provider, whose name had not John Burns Construction Company www.jbcco.com been announced as of press time. NIU Broadband Development Group www.niu.edu/rdi/ Though the state grant was awarded broadbanddevelopment to SSMMA (in partnership with the

August/September 2013 | www.broadbandcommunities.com | BROADBAND COMMUNITIES | 21 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Health care, public safety, education, libraries will reduce ISP costs to the county and SSMMA members, as well as other and the local economy will all benefit from Illinois governments [that] will be able to take advantage of cost-effective, high- the plentiful bandwidth provided by the new speed broadband services,” explained Chicago Southland Fiber Network. Greg Wass, chief information officer of Cook County, at the time of the project launch. ICN also worked with the Illinois Department of Transportation to help CSFN coordinate installation of high-speed network used by educational connectivity deeper into the community, most of the duct support required along and public institutions throughout the and as the ICN builds out its own the I-57 corridor. state. “The CSFN will extend ICN public fiber ring around the state, it Connecting Anchor Institutions By June 2013, the I-57 portion of the construction was complete, and the next phase began – connecting the Anchor Institutions Have anchor institutions. First to be linked Big Plans for Big Broadband up were the municipal facilities of the village of Monee in Will County, Two of the anchor institutions in the initial wave of CSFN connections about 35 miles south of Chicago. “Our revealed ambitious plans for using the bandwidth that they will have in community gets an immediate benefit,” abundance for the first time. Monee Village President Jay Farquhar SouthCom Combined Dispatch Center (SouthCom) provides fire, said in June. “Our public safety police and emergency medical dispatching services for the villages of departments will be using fiber-enabled Matteson, Olympia Fields, Park Forest and Richton Park. The service area monitoring and operational support covers nearly 2,000 square miles in Cook and Will counties and serves a applications, and our teachers will no population of approximately 65,000. longer be limited by bandwidth, soon Denise Pavlik, the center’s director, says SouthCom will be able to having the ability to provide high- communicate in new ways with people who call in for help. First, and quality video and educational resources simplest, it will begin accepting text messages. Next, it will tap into live in the classroom.” video feeds from the IP cameras that some of the villages have set up. Construction continued throughout Using these cameras, 911 operators might be able to see events taking the summer, linking such sites as place at crime scenes or traffic accidents. Eventually, with additional , Governor technology installed at the center, accepting video from callers’ cellphones State University, SouthCom Joint should be possible. Dispatch and about 30 more locations. Further into the future, the possibilities seem limitless. Pavlik says, Connection of the laterals to other “We’re looking to have the ability to get better connectivity to the mobile anchor institutions is expected to be units. Then we could pull up blueprints and get detailed analyses to a completed by the end of 2013. (One fire scene or a building where a shooting occurred.” Once ambulances of the locations to be linked up is are equipped with video cameras, emergency medical technicians in the the Tinley Park Convention Center, ambulances will be able to communicate visually with both the dispatch where Broadband Communities will center and the hospital emergency room. “It’s going to be a big change hold a conference on community fiber to be able to send and receive information in various ways, not just voice networks and economic development information from landlines and cellphones,” Pavlik adds. from November 5–7.) South Suburban College, another connected institution, will offer SSMMA hopes to find grant courses in telemedicine, telepresence and one-to-one applications in funding for a second phase of network which students will learn on their own timetable and at their own . construction that would extend the It will also connect with local feeder schools and libraries and has already CSFN farther into Will County, started working to develop the designs for extending bandwidth to areas possibly to the site of a proposed new in need. Lessons learned from the initial trials will be used as a boilerplate airport in Peotone, the southernmost for reaching even more areas. Says John McCormack, executive director tip of the Southland. Though the of information technology at the college, “This is an exciting time for the association is relying on grant funding college, and we are proud to be a part of this worthwhile project.” for capital costs, it expects operational and maintenance fees to be met

22 | BROADBAND COMMUNITIES | www.broadbandcommunities.com | August/September 2013 The SouthCom Dispatch Center will soon be able to tap into live video feeds from IP cameras.

primarily through user fees, according SSMMA hopes to lure new businesses to executive director Ed Paesel. to the region. Beyond the transportation and logistics firms that predominate in Outreach to the area today, the Southland now has Commercial Customers an opportunity to attract new industries In addition to serving anchor that might have overlooked the area institutions, CSFN will provide dark in the past. Paesel says that with the fiber and lit services to commercial network in place, the Southland will users through a commercial subsidiary, be in a good position to compete for and SSMMA is in discussions with call centers. And Michael Scholefield, several Internet service providers that chairman of the Chicago Southland are interested in serving commercial Economic Development Corp., customers. One service provider is recently wrote an op-ed in the Times considering linking a data center to of urging Sears – CSFN that would offer data recovery which plans to convert some shuttered, and storage services to large enterprises. underperforming stores into data centers SSMMA has had conversations for e-commerce – to take advantage of with regional businesses such the CSFN and consider this option for as transportation equipment its Chicago Southland stores. manufacturers, software developers, Scholefield said, “What I see warehouses and health care providers. is the formation of an irresistible Winchel says, “Property managers are redevelopment force for transitioning always asking when it’s going to be from a 19th-century retail available. … Now that we have fiber development model to a 21st-century in the ground, it will be interesting communications platform for not only to go back in and get them to sign on public applications but Southland the dotted line.” Unlike the anchor commercial opportunity as well.” v institutions, commercial customers will be asked to contribute toward connection costs. Masha Zager is the editor of Broadband In addition to enabling the growth Communities. You can reach her at and success of existing businesses, [email protected].

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