Riverside resident Chester Stock and his family have lived on Harris Road by Harrington Park for around three decades, he said. In that time, they’ve remained the only residents on the street, which juts out north of Olmsted Road immediately west of Harlem Avenue.
Now, Stock says it’s time the village resurfaced Harris to improve the quality of the road and put in extra drainage to deal with standing water that has historically pooled up after rain or snow. But village officials say there are no plans for such a project.
“There’s no other drainage here at all. You see how torn up it is, patched? Kids come by here, little kids. It’s a very busyplace in the summertime,” Stock told the Landmark. “[The park] is higher than [the road], so all the water comes in here. There are no sewers. There should be a curb here on both sides, like a normal street … The street is in bad shape.”
Stock said he had records of drainage issues going back 16 years, which more recently led to flooding issues in his home’s basement. He said he’s reached out to village staff and officials about having the street improved and the sewers connected, but he’s heard back that such a thing is out of the village’s budget, and there are no plans to fix the issues he’s noticed.
In an email, Village Manager Jessica Frances said Stock first reached out to village staff in 2019 about people parking illegally on the road, creating depressions, and that he reached out again late last summer about resurfacing and connecting the sewers.
“The depressions had standing water, which was his concern. [In 2019], he was asking that a sewer connection be installed to allow for drainage and eliminate the standing water; however, there is no ability to connect to a sewer in that location. Since 2019, the Parks and Recreation Department has worked with the police department to enforce no parking on that road during peak times,” she said in the email.
Since 2019, she said, Riverside’s public works and parks and recreation departments have worked together to “periodically” fill depressions on the side of the street near Harrington Park “as needed,” but the village does not have plans to resurface Harris Road within the next 10 years, as “there are other streets that are in worse condition.”
According to a village-wide pavement rating from 2024 that Frances shared, Harris Road is ranked between 59 and 69 out of 100, higher than several other roads in town that are ranked below 59, including Olmsted Road, to which Harris connects.
Frances attributed the tendency for standing water to sit on Harris Road to the topography of the area; some parts of the road are lower than the surrounding properties, including Stock’s, causing the water to collect there, she said.
Stock said he worries mosquitoes and other insects could breed in the standing water and cause further issues for him and parkgoers.
He said officials told him it would cost $35,000 to resurface Harris Road. Frances confirmed the figure was the village engineer’s estimate in 2025.
“This request must be evaluated with all the other water main, sewer and street needs of the village that may be in a worse condition,” she wrote. “To ensure that the village are good stewards of resources, costs are always a concern coupled with how many [people] will benefit from the improvements.”
Despite Riverside’s lack of a plan to resurface Harris Road, Stock still says he’d like to see conditions improved.
“It’s a safety factor. If water is going to still stand because the park is higher than the rest, they have to have curbs and sewers,” he said. “That’s the right way to do it.”