Metropolitan Planning Council

Understanding the Calumet River (Reach 5)

Carolyn
Calumet River illustration

About the Project

The Chicago River System has evolved since the launch of the Our Great Rivers initiative. To determine if Chicago is reducing barriers to the good life and fostering shared prosperity for its residents and business all along the river system, this evaluation notes how the system and its surrounding communities have changed over time. Consistent with the project structure, the findings are organized into the themes of inviting, productive, and living.

About the Approach

The Our Great Rivers project considers the Chicago River System as six distinct areas, or ‘reaches.’ The following analysis shares demographic, socioeconomic, community development, and ecological data and trends between approximately 2015 and 2025 to detail transformations along or near the river system.

In the Current

Want to get to know catalytic projects and leaders bringing the vision of Our Great Rivers to life in Reach 5? To learn more about the  initiatives and people creating lasting benefits for local communities and the river system, explore two stories of transformation here: 100th Street and the Riverdale Community Land Trust.

A Glimpse Into Reach 5: the Calumet River

Where is this reach located?

This reach includes the Calumet River, Lake Calumet, and Little Calumet River. It is bounded by Morgan Street to the west and Lake Michigan on the east, and set on the border of the City of Chicago with Riverdale. The overall length is 13 miles and it is home to the Illinois International Port District as well as many other industrial uses. It touches the community areas of West Pullman, Riverdale, South Deering, Hegewisch, East Side, Calumet Heights, and South Chicago.

What are the main characteristics of this reach?

The Calumet River reach is characterized by its active industrial landscape, expansive waterways, and working port facilities. While industry continues to define much of the corridor, the reach also includes important natural areas, including Lake Calumet and the Little Calumet River, that support ongoing ecological restoration. Together, these landscapes connect the surrounding South Side communities to both the region’s economic activity and its environmental assets.

What’s rising to the surface in this reach?

The key findings and trends of this reach show a nuanced story about this reach – and our river system as a whole. The Calumet reach lost population and continues to face low household incomes, limited river access, scarce open space, and a high share of vacant land, even as jobs grew substantially, the value of commercial development increased, open space expanded, vacant parcels declined, and combined sewer overflows have become rare. Taken together, these findings suggest that the Calumet River remains both an essential economic and ecological asset and a place where long-standing inequities persist. Continued investment should build on community-led planning, workforce development, and habitat restoration, while ensuring that new development expands access to the riverfront and open space, supports existing residents, and delivers lasting environmental and economic benefits to surrounding communities.

MPC developed data points to characterize changes along Chicago’s River System between approximately 2015-2025. This page gives a general overview of the ways the area surrounding this reach has, or has not, transformed. For more in-depth data, further analysis, and the sources used for this research, view the complete data sets at the link below.

View River Reach 5 Data Sets

Increasing

Decreasing

Same or similar

Good

Fair

Poor

How has the area changed over time?

2014-2022
Demographics

The Calumet reach is the only reach that saw notable population loss (about 2,000 people) between 2014 and 2022. This population loss was largely due to more than 1,200 Latinx residents leaving the area, but the Latinx population increased slightly in adjacent tracts, indicating the Latinx population loss may have been related to the area near the river.

Socioeconomics

The Calumet Reach as the lowest median household income, rent, and home value across Chicago’s river reaches, and these indicators increased at a lower rate than citywide in Chicago. Household incomes and costs are generally consistent between the river tracts and river adjacent tracts, indicating these are likely neighborhood trends and not directly related to proximity to the river.

Inviting Rivers Data

How has the area become more, or less, inviting?

Land Use

Transportation and industrial land uses make up the greatest share of land along the river in the Calumet reach (25% and 19%, respectively). Transportation land uses include parking, maintenance yards, freight terminals, and commercial docks. Transportation uses decreased by about 150 acres between 2010 and 2020, while industrial uses increased by 140 acres. Right of way and utility uses also make up a notable share of land in this reach, which can include uses like rail, roadway, communications infrastructure, waste management, and utility companies. Residential and commercial uses make up a very small portion of land near the river compared to adjacent tracts and other river reaches. The share of open space is also relatively small, at 5% in this reach, but it increased between 2010 and 2020 by nearly 350 acres.

Physical Improvements and Access Points

The Calumet has the least access to trails of Chicago’s river reaches with just 6% of the river edge covered in trail and just 4 access points.

Calumet Connect, a local coalition of community and civic stakeholders, is a key force in shaping land use in the Calumet region, focused on improving the health and well-being of communities and residents in Southeast Chicago based on community vision. Funded by the Our Great Rivers grant over the last decade, the partnership conducted community engagement and research to create the Calumet Connect Databook, highlighting the environmental and public health challenges in the Calumet Industrial Corridor. This initiative (along with years of organizing efforts by many other community groups and activists) helped inform the HUD investigation that found “the city of Chicago is violating the civil rights of its residents by relocating polluting businesses from white communities into Black and Latino areas that already are overwhelmed with environmental and health issues.” The agreement settled from the investigation requires the City of Chicago to take actionable steps to protect neighborhoods in the Calumet region that have been burdened by environmental harm and led to the creation of City’s Environmental Justice Action Plans and Cumulative Impact Assessment.

Led by The Southeast Environmental Task Force, the Calumet Connect continues engage community voices to drive changes in the Calumet region, including remediation of the Schroud Site, activating the 100th street site, and helping shape the Department of Planning and Development’s update to the Calumet Design Guidelines and Calumet Area Land Use Plan.

Productive Rivers Data

How has the reach become more, or less, productive?

Office, Industrial, and Multifamily Development

Of Chicago’s river reaches, the Calumet reach has the lowest average sale price ($33.50) and rental cost ($9) per square foot for office, industrial, and multifamily property within two blocks of the river of all the reaches. The average sale price and rental cost both increased over the last decade, by about 20% and 50%, respectively.

Vacancy rates in office, industrial, and multifamily units (meaning units in existing buildings that are not occupied) remained relatively low and steady at 6%.

Vacancy

The rate of vacant parcels, meaning lots without development, has remained steady relative to the number of parcels in this large reach. The number of vacant parcels has decreased by 49 units, one of the greatest decrease in number of vacant parcels across all river reaches. However, the overall vacancy sits at the highest rate of all reaches at 15%.

Jobs and Businesses

The Calumet reach saw the greatest increase in jobs of all the reaches, with a 41% increase and more than 3,500 additional jobs between 2012 and 2021. These jobs were notably located in river tracts, as jobs decreased in adjacent tracts.

The number of businesses decreased, following the citywide trend.

OAI Inc., an Our Great Rivers grantee, has been contributing to workforce development in the Calumet region with their High Bridge program, which trains municipal staff and students entering the workforce in Green Stormwater Infrastructure installation and maintenance.

Living Rivers Data

How has this reach become more, or less, living?

Water Quality

Chicago has a combined sewer system, meaning that sewage and stormwater from rainfall and melting snow enters the same pipe system. When this system is overwhelmed, the combined sewage and stormwater is emptied directly into our river system, polluting the river and increasing the risk of flooding. This emptying of sewage and stormwater into the river system is called a combined sewer overflow (CSO). The Calumet reach had only one CSO event between 2016 and 2021—the fewest CSO events by far of all of Chicago’s river reaches. The Calumet reach benefits in part from receiving more Lake Michigan water than other river reaches and from The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District’s (MWRD) Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (TARP), which built large, deep tunnels and reservoirs that store stormwater and sewage until it can be treated, mitigating CSO events. The TARP reservoir that affects this reach is the Thornton Composite Reservoir, which was completed in 2015. Located in Chicago’s South Suburbs, the reservoir captures sewage and stormwater along the Cal-Sag Channel, Little Calumet River, Grand Calumet River, and the Calumet River. The Thornton Composite Reservoir is the largest combined sewer reservoir in the world, capturing up to 7.9 billion gallons. CSO events are complex: the severity of each event depends on the location, amount of impervious surfaces that exacerbate runoff, weather conditions, and other factors. Our region has not seen a complete elimination of CSO events, and some years continue to see more severe CSOs than others. It is important to continue to make ongoing efforts to reduce stormwater runoff and mitigate CSO events, as the effects of climate change, such as the heavy rainfall events we saw in the summer of 2026, continue to pose pollution and flooding challenges to the Chicago region.

The biodiversity of the Chicago river system’s fish population has come a long way. In the 1970s, there were fewer than 10 species of fish in our river system. Today, thanks to decades of habitat restoration and advocacy from organizations highlighted throughout this website and beyond, there are more than 80 recorded species. Fish move throughout the river system, and the number of recorded species in a given reach provide only a snapshot in time based on when the data was collected. Though there are these limitations to collecting fish species counts, MWRD monitoring station data averages over time show that this reach sustains a diverse fish population. Between 2016 and 2021, the two Calumet reach MWRD monitoring stations, Halsted Street and Indiana Avenue, saw an average annual count of 19 and 22 fish species, respectively.

Open Space

The Calumet reach has very limited open space, making up just 5% of land along the river. Nearly 350 acres of open space were added between 2010 and 2020. Ongoing efforts to establish more open space in this reach need continued investment.

Explore the research on other reaches in the Chicago River System below.

Visit river reach pages:
View the complete data sets for each of the river reaches:

Learn more about Our Great Rivers and this Understanding Our Rivers evaluation project.

Methodology

Research Approach

This project examined how areas (census tracts) along the river changed over time, from approximately 2015 to 2025. Data related to demographic, socioeconomic, development, and ecological changes, were compiled to understand how areas along the river transformed over the decade. Trends/variables included:

  • Population changes by racial and ethnic group
  • Rent and home value changes
  • Job, business, and vacancy rate changes
  • Land uses
  • Trails and access points
  • Community projects and activations
  • Fish diversity

In addition to breaking down the river geography at the citywide and “reach”-level scale, we examined data by census tracts based on their proximity to the river:

  • River tracts: Census tracts that touch a river in the city of Chicago
  • River adjacent tracts: Tracts that touch the “river tracts.” Data in these tracts act as a proxy to the nearby neighborhood in order to differentiate general neighborhood trends from findings that are unique to tracts that directly abut the river.
Research Questions

For each data area, we asked the following questions, which allow for a nuanced look at how river areas have developed, when compared to other parts of the city:

  • How do trends/changes compare across specific river areas (aka “reaches”)?
  • How do trends/changes along the river (aka “river tracts”) compare to changes in areas immediately adjacent to river census tracts (aka “river adjacent tracts”, which are the comparison groups)?
  • How do trends/changes along the river compare to changes across the city as a whole (all city census tracts)?

Sources

All sources for this research are listed on the Data Set Factsheets available on each reach page.

Authors

This evaluation project was produced by the MPC staff listed below. It was also developed and supported by Christina Harris, Alec Singer, and Kate Mackie. 

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