Is the former South Works site ready to take a quantum leap into computing?
A view looking north toward the Chicago skyline from the former U.S. Steel South Works site. Plans are in the works for a potential quantum computing facility on the site in South Chicago.
Sun-Times file
It's a good sign that Gov. J.B. Pritzker wants to build a major quantum computing facility in Chicago.
What makes it even better is that the governor and the Palo Alto, California company he is working with, PsiQuantum, are proposing building the center on the massive, long-dormant former U.S. Steel South Works site in the South Chicago neighborhood, as Crain’s Chicago Business reported last week. A second facility is being proposed for the former Texaco refinery in Lockport.
Getting details of the plan is harder than pulling hen's teeth, with neither the governor's office, PsiQuantum nor Related Midwest — the possible developer of the South Works site — responding to calls for comment.
But Chicago needs more industries that beckon the future. And the city certainly would benefit from something big happening at South Works, a 500-acre tract overlooking the lakefront south of 79th Street that's been undeveloped and existing far below its potential since the steel mill shut down 30 years ago.
More powerful than a supercomputer
Quantum computers uses algorithms more powerful than regular or even supercomputers and can thus better calculate larger and more complex problems. It's an ability that could be critical in a range of uses, from manufacturing new medical drugs to tracing elaborate financial transactions.
Rather than using the strings of electronic 0's and 1's — binary bits — that are the backbone of typical computing, quantum computers instead use qubits, or quantum bits. But in order for a qubit to hold its information and remain error-free, a quantum computer's processors must be kept to 460 degrees below zero.
Hence the need for a large, specialized computing facility such as the kind planned for South Works and Lockport.
The U.S. is a leader of this revolutionary technology, with IBM at or near the top. The University of Chicago is a center for the development of quantum computing. If built, the Chicago and Lockport locations could bring more than 1,000 jobs, Crain’s reported.
A lifeline for redevelopment
Might the computing facility be the lifeline South Works has needed for decades now?
The big parcel has been snakebit for more than a generation, as one redevelopment plan for the site after another failed.
Solo Cup Co. bought 120 acres of the land in 2001 to build a factory, then scuttled the plans in 2007 and sold the property to the development team that sought to build the ambitious — and ultimately ill-fated — Chicago Lakeside development on the U.S. Steel site.
Chicago Lakeside, which won city approval in 2010, promised a city-within-a-city of 13,000 residences, divided between homes and high-rise towers. A staggering 17 million square feet of retail was also planned, along with a high school, a marina, new parks and an extension of U.S. 41/Lake Shore Drive through the site.
The entire deal went belly-up a few years later, as did a later plan under different developers to build a neighborhood of 20,000 homes there.
Meanwhile, the city spent $60 million to bring in Route 41 and created Steelworkers Park and Park 566 on the site, but the vast majority of the parcel sits empty to this day.
With a history like that behind it, the PsiQuantum facility, if it happens, could be the solution for the fraught tract.
But the public needs to know more. The governor's office would do well to provide details of PsiQuantum's plans for the site as soon as practical. That's especially true if any public subsidy is going to be requested to bring the deal — and the one in Lockport — to fruition.
And if the project goes forward, the South Works site has serious environmental concerns that would need addressing, including remediating or capping layers of slag buried underground. Slag is toxic waste caused by the steel-making process.
Still, the project could provide the shot in the arm and the economic boost South Chicago has long needed and deserves. That would be a major win not just for the neighborhood, but for the city and for Illinois too.
The Sun-Times welcomes letters to the editor and op-eds. See our guidelines.