East St. Louis

The former director of the East St. Louis Public Library was indicted in federal court on five counts of wire fraud and embezzlement.

Riders will be bused via MetroLink Station Shuttles between the three platforms this weekend. Customers traveling through this area are encouraged to plan for an additional 20 minutes during their weekend commute.

With $1 million in funding from the federal government, R3 Development leaders hope they can be operational with their expansion in about 18 months.

The regional engineer for the Illinois Department of Transportation said he'd hoped the project would be complete by August or early September. “But if things continue to go well, we expect it could be opened much earlier,” he said.

The 16,000-square-foot facility houses a new St. Clair County 911 dispatch unit, office space for the county sheriff's department and backup equipment for the light rail system's control center.

East St. Louis' attorneys are asking the court for a permanent injunction that would block the Illinois comptroller’s office from intercepting state funds to instead support police pensions.

The Metro East community's population has been dropping since the 1950s. Lansdowne Up wants to reverse that trend by building the first market-rate housing in decades.

The warning was part of an April letter the director of the Chicago regional office of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to the East St. Louis mayor and city council.

The bridge just southwest of Highway 15 closed in late April after a vehicle struck it. The Illinois Department of Transportation made the move over safety concerns.

The nonprofit purchased properties to renovate or demolish existing houses and to construct new ones like those in the housing development, a 20-home subdivision called Lansdowne Park.