Larry Huggins
Larry Huggins (born around February 1950) is the CEO of Riteway-Huggins Construction Services. He once served as the chairman of Metra, the Chicago-area commuter rail agency. He recovered from bankruptcy in the 1970s through Chicago’s minority-business affirmative action program and is an alumnus and former principal of Englewood Technical Prep Academy. He helped build the AT&T Corporate Center, now known as Franklin Center, and he was vice president of Black Contractors United in the mid-1990s. He also founded the Chicago Football Classic, a yearly college game at Soldier Field between two historically black colleges and universities.
Huggins was appointed to Metra’s board by Mayor Richard M. Daley in 1997 and became acting chairman in 2011. He withdrew from consideration for permanent chair in 2011, saying the position was a Republican one, and remained acting chair until November 2, 2012, when Brad O’Halloran took over. He resigned from the Metra board in August 2013, days after O’Halloran’s resignation, following conversations with Mayor Rahm Emanuel about a patronage scandal. His company has done work at O’Hare International Airport and McCormick Place, including a $115 million no-bid contract to manage the airport’s people-mover system. Riteway Construction Services Inc. was the general contractor for Cook County Hospital, a project that drew controversy after the company failed to file its 1997 annual report, leading the Illinois Secretary of State to dissolve it on January 2, 1998, just before the hospital’s spring 1998 groundbreaking for a $551 million, 464-bed facility.
Huggins spent part of his youth in Atlanta and part in Englewood, Chicago. His sister Phyllis died in 1992.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 12:41 (CET).