A check of online booking sites for stays starting Thursday through July 4 shows rooms are widely available. But Michael Jacobson, of the Illinois Hotel & Lodging Association, said that NASCAR, for all the fanfare, was never expected to fill downtown hotels to capacity. “It’s going to be a very strong weekend. And hotel metrics are not the only measure of success for these events.”

It’s not known how many big spenders will attend. A NASCAR spokesperson Tuesday could not provide the number of ticket sales. The attendance estimate of 100,000 could include many who confine themselves to free events at Grant Park’s Butler Field. Business owners and leaders are cautious in their outlook for the weekend and are focused on its long-term benefits for Chicago.

“Those ideas aren’t new or radical, of course, but Crown was willing to use his clout to insist that his peers put more focus on them and, in a city where great ideas have been floating around for years, intense focus and the provision of resources probably are what matter the most. In essence, Crown was promising mobilization.”

“I believe they were sacrificed. ‘Well, we’ll just throw them out to the world. We don’t really care where they land,'” said Sandra Ward, whose grandson attends the special rec program.

Youth homicides since Johnson has been in office have doubled since this time last year, according to a Wirepoints analysis. Chicago has seen nine teens under 19 die from violence in the past month compared to four during the same time frame last year.

“Cook County has successfully acquired and erased nearly $80 million in medical debt,” said Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle. “We spent only a fraction of that, about 800,000 less than a million dollars, to do it. This will benefit over 72 thousand Cook County families, with many more to come.” Cook County will spend $12 million to eliminate as much as a billion dollars in medical debt for its residents.

Car break-ins in the Loop are double what they were last year; More than 100 have been reported.

The $15 million pilot is funded by a portion of the $1 billion the county received in federal pandemic relief through the American Rescue Plan. The county has hundreds of millions of federal relief money left to spend, according to the county’s latest budget forecast.

Belmont Avenue was shut down for several hours as people danced on cars and blocked the road. At one point, a Chicago police supervisor estimated that 300 people were in the crowd. The takeover is a repeat performance of a similar incident in the same location on the day after last year’s Chicago Pride Parade.

It’s the latest form of direct cash assistance from the city as residents continue to recover from the coronavirus pandemic. Less than a week after applications opened, 1,352 people have applied for the program,

“First, Chicago will be creating the largest school board in the country. This will be a mini-legislature, inevitably becoming either a contentious body that will be slow to decide anything or a rubber-stamp entity essentially controlled by the Chicago Teachers Union.”

“Because we do not have property tax fairness,” Chicago Bears’ President and CEO Kevin Warren wrote. “We will not be moving forward with plans to develop the property at this time…”