Photos: Earthwork on Cook County’s transfer station project well underway
Construction season in Cook County is in full swing. Along with housing development and municipal office space projects, area residents will also see progress on the county’s transfer station project.
Interim Administrator Rena Rogers told WTIP that work has begun on two of the sites included in the transfer station plan. While it is often referred to as, simply, the transfer station, the county will build a new central transfer station in Grand Marais, make improvements to the existing Tofte transfer station, and build a new, smaller transfer station in Hovland. North Shore Waste has been contracted by the county to operate the facilities on the county’s behalf.
For the Hovland station, the county is not planning on constructing many buildings, so once the earthwork is completed, finishing the site could happen relatively quickly. Rogers said it could be operational before the end of July.
For the Grand Marais site, the process will be longer. The county has put out two rounds of bids for the work that will go into the project, and Rogers told WTIP that some of the bids have come in over budget. As a result, the designers have looked for ways to reduce cost, without sacrificing quality. Rogers said they have been able to reduce the estimated costs to within $200,000 of the project budget, and added that they are still hoping to find other places to save money, to keep the final cost within the project’s roughly $9 million budget.
The county plans to construct a cast concrete building at the Grand Marais location. This building style tends to go up faster than some other types of construction once the building’s pieces are on-site. Rogers said that to prepare the site, North Shore Waste, who owns the property the county-owned building will be located on, already did extensive soil borings and surveying. Once the earthwork is completed, construction can begin.
Kirsten Wisniewski June 23, 2025
