News

Boger Bog, McHenry County Conservation District, June 2008

Jennifer Anderson, S.E., P.E., Project Manager of Kudrna & Associates' Boger Bog Conservation Area Boardwalk and Footbridge Improvement project, poses with her children on Opening Day. 

Future City, January 23, 2008

Kudrna & Associates staff participated in the annual Future City contest held at UIC.   Business Development Manager, Woody Siddall pictured above, 2nd row, far left. 

ASCE  Young Member Group, January 6, 2008

Kudrna's Project Manager, Carrie Westhoff, P.E., partcipates in the ASCE's Young Members Group Event, "Winter Weatherization for Chicago's Elderly", in January.  (1st row, 2nd from right) 

Taste of Randolph/Fulton Market, October 24, 2007

A member of the Taste of Fulton/Market visits with Kudrna's Project Manager, Steve Fessenbecker, P.E. in the photo above.  Kudrna has been an event sponsor for two years in a row.

The Randolph/Fulton Market Associates (RFMA) hosted its annual Taste of the Randolph/Fulton Market on Wednesday, October 24th at Galleria Marchetti, 825 W. Erie Street.  More than 200 business executives and community leaders attended the event to help raise funds for the RFMA and the James Jordan Boys and Girls Club, which features after-school cultural, recreational, and educational programs for young people.  The event was a huge success again and Kudrna & Associates had a great marketing booth that highlighted the area projects completed in 2007.

Welcome Scott Benson, P.E., June, 2007

_{We are very pleased to welcome Scott Benson, P.E. to the Kudrna team in June of 2007! Mr. Benson is a Project Manager with more than 17 years of experience in transportation and structural engineering. He has experience on numerous Illinois Department of Transportation, Illinois State Toll Highway Authority and on private and publicly sponsored transportation infrastructure projects in the Chicagoland area. He has been responsible for the development and preparation of contract plans, specifications and various technical reports on a variety of civil, transportation and structural projects. His bridge design experience includes both steel and Concrete Bulb T beam bridge superstructures. His experience also includes railroad bridge design. Most recently Scott participated in the conceptual design for bridges adjacent to "the Spire" skyscraper along the Chicago River and Lake Shore Drive. Also Scott's previous experience included District 1, IDOT as well as Will County Department of Transportation. He is scheduled to receive his MS Degree in Structural Engineering from University of Illinois, Chicago in December of 2007.}

Chase Corporate Challenge, May 2007 

Kudrna & Associates, Ltd., participated in the 2007 Chase Corporate Challenge charity event for Bear's Care.  It was our first year running in this event, and a great time was had by all! 

O'Hare Modernization Program, August 2006

Dear OMP Affiliated Companies,

The Center of Excellence for Airport Technology (CEAT) at the University of Illinois thanks each of you for your time and consideration with our Summer Internship Program. We especially want to acknowledge Kiewit Western, Kudrna & Associates, and Smith Engineering Consultants, Inc. for their time and commitment employing three Civil Engineering Students this summer. We realize that many of the companies would have liked to have found a student intern through our list, so there will be another opportunity next year. For 2007, we will work to have a complete list to all of you by February so you can match an intern with your company early.

Here is the link to an article on the CEAT Summer Internship Program featuring the student interns: http://cee.uiuc.edu/research/ceat/

Thanks again. And, please contact with me with any questions and/or suggestions for our Summer Internship Program.

Sincerely,
Vicki Dixon

ASCE Citizen Engineer of the Year, October 2005

Dr. Frank L. Kudrna, P.E., CEO and Founder of Kudrna & Associates, Ltd., was awarded this year's Citizen Engineer of the Year at the ASCE's 89th Annual Dinner Meeting.

April 2005

Firm offers vision for DuSable Park
Plan charts land near Navy Pier as tribute to settler
By Patrick Rucker
Tribune staff reporter
Published April 29, 2005

A park dedicated to Jean Baptiste Point DuSable will be converted from a small, idle lakefront plot into a proud attraction with open spaces and tributes to its namesake settler, according to plans made public this week.

On Wednesday evening, a Loop civil engineering firm presented its vision to develop the 3.2-acre DuSable Park at the mouth of the Chicago River near Navy Pier.

The plans call for a park dominated by a large, grassy lakeside lawn ringed by a wooded area dotted with installations that pay tribute to DuSable--Chicago's first non-Native American settler.

"I've worked on a lot of park projects, and this is truly phenomenal," said Bob O'Neill, Grant Park Advisory Council president and a member of the district's DuSable Park steering committee.

A footpath around the site will wind past an outdoor classroom, a small wetland area and a boardwalk that stretches out toward a lowered seawall.

A site named Founder's Plaza will sit in the center of the park and may have a sculpture tribute to DuSable. The Art Institute of Chicago has commissioned Martin Puryear, an abstract artist who once lived and worked in Chicago, to do the sculpture.

Designers aimed to evoke Chicago's history as a crossroads for travel and its unique natural characteristics.

The wooded area will be dominated by native plant species like hackberry and white oak trees, which supporters hope will attract some of the millions of migratory birds that annually fly over the area. The wetland area is meant to be a reminder that the mouth of the Chicago River was once a thick marsh.

Early outlines for the plan call for it to be completed by the fall of 2006. But Thursday, Park District officials said that they had no firm timetable on when the project will be started or finished.

Still, they said that the plans presented Wednesday were likely to hold as the development moves ahead.

"We do not anticipate any drastic changes from here on," Park District spokeswoman Michele Jones said.

That news will come as a disappointment to many downtown dog owners who had hoped the plans for the park would include a dedicated space for their pets. The Streeterville Dog Club had been organizing a petition to have the plot designated as an oasis for urban dogs.

"If dogs can be accommodated, that's great. But it is not going to be a dog park," O'Neill said.

In 1987, Mayor Harold Washington created DuSable Park on the peninsula jutting northeast of Lake Shore Drive and the Chicago River. But it served mostly as a dumping ground for waste soil and a plot often eyed by developers.

In recent years, groups such as the Friends of DuSable have pushed for the site to be improved to serve as a fitting tribute to the black fur trader who set up a trading post in Chicago in the 18th Century.

In December, Kudrna & Associates was awarded a Park District contract to spend nearly $250,000 to survey the site and determine what kinds of improvements could be made on a $9 million budget. In the last several months, the firm has studied the site and what is required to shore up the retaining walls and make other improvements. Planners also contemplated new landscaping, lighting and footpaths around the area.

O'Neill said he expects DuSable Park to complement the other lakeshore developments and that he hopes it will be paid for through the kinds of public-private partnerships that supported Millennium Park.

"We get a much better, more interesting park through this kind of financing partnership," O'Neill said. "Millennium Park has set a precedent and shown that nature and culture can come together in a downtown park."

Haroon Rashid, president and founder of Friends of DuSable and a member of the park's steering committee, said he is happy that the plans aim to create a scene that DuSable might recognize.

Rashid said he expects the park will "bring a flashback of what the area used to look like, what the river was like. ... Hopefully, it will be a place where people can rest and reflect on how things were."