Skokie mayor says "very preliminary conversations" have been launched about a Yellow Line extension

In a recent State of the Village address, Skokie, Illinois, Mayor Ann Tennes said the north Chicago suburb was in "very preliminary conversations" about an expansion of the CTA Yellow Line.

Discussions are under way with the Gov. JB Pritzker's office and community partners about extending the Yellow Line, also known as the Skokie Swift, to the Old Orchard corridor, Tennes said in the 2026 State of the Village address on Friday, May 8.

This is not the first time such a proposal has come up, but Tennes said there is interest from major stakeholders.

"The Illinois Holocaust Museum of Education Center had expressed interest, as has Westfield Old Orchard [shopping center]," Tennes said in the address, "and just think of how a Yellow Line terminal in a place that makes sense — not in the Niles North parking lot for those of you historians here, but at a place that makes sense — think of how that would support all of the new housing in this corridor."

Tennes emphasized that the conversations are preliminary.

"To be clear, one of them was held in a storage room at Soul Good Coffee when the governor was about to give them a $100,000 check," she said in the address. "But they reflect, they continue, and they reflect our commitment to thinking boldly about mobility, connectivity, and long-term economic opportunity."

A Skokie village spokesman reiterated to CBS News Chicago on Wednesday that the talks of a Yellow Line extension are "very preliminary," and said the village "does not have additional details to share at this time."

The Chicago Transit Authority and Gov. Pritzker's office did not immediately return an email requesting comment.

The Yellow Line is the only CTA train line that never makes it downtown. It runs along an east-west route and then a southeast-northwest route from the Howard terminal in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood — where it converges with the Red and Purple lines — to the Dempster-Skokie terminal on Dempster Street about two blocks west of Skokie Boulevard.

For many years, these were the only stops on the short rapid transit line. But in 2012, the Oakton-Skokie station opened in between the terminals at Oakton Street and Skokie Boulevard, in downtown Skokie and near the Illinois Science + Technology Park.

What is now the Yellow Line first opened in 1925 for use by both Chicago Rapid Transit Company 'L' trains and North Shore Line commuter trains, according to the Chicago "L".org history website. There were several other stops in the earliest days of the line — at Ridge, Asbury, and Dodge avenues in Evanston, and at Crawford Avenue-East Prairie Road, Kostner Avenue, Oakton Street in the same spot as today, and Main Street in Skokie — then called Niles Center.

The CTA took over in 1947, and stopped running trains on the line the following year — replacing the service with the No. 97 Skokie bus line, the website notes. North Shore Line commuter trains kept running on the line until the Chicago, North Shore & Milwaukee Railroad went out of business in January 1963.

In 1964, the CTA began running trains on the line again and called it the Skokie Swift, but the line ran only as a shuttle between the Howard and Dempster stops.

Talk of extending the line is nothing new, Chicago "L".org notes. There has been talk of extending service north to Lake-Cook Road in Highland Park, or south from downtown Skokie to Montrose Avenue to connect to the Blue Line, Chicago "L".org said.

But the Old Orchard extension is the only one that has gained the interest of the CTA, the website said. Federal funding was earmarked in 2005 for several CTA extensions — including the Red Line extension to 130th Street for which ground was broken just last month, an extension of the Orange Line to Ford City Mall, and the Yellow Line extension to Old Orchard, Chicago "L".org reported.

But in 2011, the Yellow Line extension, as well as the Orange Line extension, were put on hold amid a financial crisis at the CTA.

The plan for the Yellow Line extension at that time was unpopular among some Skokie residents. It called for a single-track elevated extension, and as Tennes referenced in her speech, it would have cut through the Niles North High School property and usurped its parking lot.

Because of the encroachment on the school property, community residents and the Niles Township High Schools District 219 board intensely opposed the extension plan.

Other than Tennes' reference to a "place that makes sense," no specifics have been provided as to where the village might have in mind for a new Yellow Line terminal in the Old Orchard corridor.