Chicago ? Home to vagrants, rodents of legendary size and an obstructing support column, decrepit Lower Wacker Drive was as much a Chicago classic as Bears football and Old Style beer.

Millions of people who have never driven it would recognize the crumbling, menacingly dim street from a famed chase scene in the movie “The Blues Brothers.”

Most Chicago motorists preferred to leave the covered thoroughfare to delivery drivers and cabbies.

But now, with a $200 million renovation finished and a splash of publicity about its reopening this week, the drive that hugs the Chicago River beneath some of the city’s priciest real estate could become as popular as its overhead counterpart.

Both levels of one of Chicago’s busiest thoroughfares are scheduled to reopen Tuesday after nearly two years of reconstruction.

Uninitiated motorists who braved the old Lower Wacker often felt they had taken their lives into their hands. For one thing, there was that pillar in one lane that forced vehicles to veer around it.

“It was dark and somewhat challenging,” said Brian Steele of the Chicago Department of Transportation.

“Lower Wacker was a favorite secret among many motorists, something that they liked to keep to themselves or sometimes impress their friends,” Steele said. “The secret is out.”

Scaffolding and construction equipment line Lower Wacker Drive along the Chicago River. After a 00 million renovation project, both upper and lower levels of the storied roadway are scheduled to reopen Tuesday.

Wacker Drive was built in 1926, and by the Great Depression its lower level was known as the “Hoover Hotel” by the destitute men who called it home. It was even mentioned at Al Capone’s 1931 tax evasion trial, when U.S. Atty. George E.Q. Johnson railed against the mobster’s lavish lifestyle.

“Did he buy these $27 shirts to protect the shivering men who sleep under Wacker Drive at night?” Johnson sarcastically asked the jury.

The reconstruction is being completed on time and within its budget. Lighting was improved, there is a new lane for delivery drivers turning off to the loading docks that serve 57 high-rise buildings along the drive, and difficult-to-navigate corners have been smoothed out.

And that column in one lane of traffic is gone.

“All I know is I didn’t hit it,” Steele said of his own driving experiences.

Cab driver Fouad Mazroua wasn’t sure how he felt about the reopening. For him, Lower Wacker was the quickest way to get from the train stations west of the Loop to the offices and tourist areas on the east near the lake – free of the stoplights that stand at every block above ground.

“It worked for the cab drivers,” he said. “The traffic will be busy. It’s going to be a big difference.”