By John Greenfield

Imagine yourself watching—better yet, competing in—a breakneck bicycle race on a gleaming indoor track at the Chicago Velo Campus sports district. It is a freezing winter night outside but sweat pours off the chiseled, Lycra-clad riders as they whiz by and zip around the sloped turns on sleek fixed-gear bikes. The crowd goes wild.

Emanuele Bianchi, businessman, racer and president of the low-profit limited liability corporation Chicago Velo Campus L3C, is working hard to make this vision a reality. The sports district would include a stadium nearly as large as the United Center housing the velodrome (bike racing arena) and many other sports facilities, plus outdoor BMX, mountain bike and cyclocross tracks, at an estimated total cost of $40 to $45 million.

Bianchi, no relation to the Bianchi bicycle company, and his partners want to build the velo campus on the former site of U.S. Steel South Works, a hunk of land on the lakefront between 79th and 92nd Streets. They hope it will be the centerpiece of Lakeside, an ambitious new 500-acre community proposed for the site by real estate developer McCaffery Interests, in partnership with the steel company, which still owns the land. Read the rest of this entry »