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“Getting people back downtown ... is a hard economic necessity for this city,” said a source who has seen the plan. “They’re going to come downtown because there’s stuff to do. … This is a massive step toward that.” Many questions remain, including how much Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf would be willing to contribute and how much public financing would be needed — given that demand for public resources is high, and public appetite for bankrolling stadiums is low.
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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Clamp down on criminals by actually prosecuting and jailing offenders and slowly people will return to the Loop. Until people feel safe , it will not happen no matter what you build .
South Loop is already a densely populated area, already troubled with a significant street-crime problem. A baseball stadium won’t solve its neighborhood problems.
Reinsdorf enjoys an extraordinarily great deal at existing White Sox stadium. Plainly-speaking, Reinsdorf wants to replace his now-aging stadium at taxpayers’ cost, thinking he can craft a new deal to hoodwink taxpayers again, to provide him another free stadium for his team and his company. The Jim Thompson-created deal for existing White Sox stadium benefited Jerry, not taxpayers. Feds curiously weren’t interested, but the insider-politics and corrupt deal-making cost taxpayers plenty.
Jerry is 87 years old and apparently has only a minority interest (19% maybe?), so he’s really just doing the bidding for the other, undisclosed and unknown owners at this late stage in his life. Mazar owned 30% but he died a decade ago and no one knows who inherited his shares. That leaves other unknown owners who own the other HALF of the team. Really, apparently no one really knows who the other owners are, it’s all just speculation.
Nothing is bringing people back downtown until they feel safe. There should be absolutely zero public funds dedicated to the White Sox. The organization is poorly run, and looking for another free handout after the state bailed them out last time. Big Jim Thompson is dead and gone Mr. Reinsdorf, and nobody gives a damn about your fiasco of a team. No public funds!
Not sure if this generation of folks will come back downtown even if they improve safety. It was such a PITA to get to into downtown Chicago pre-covid but we all just suffered the inconvenience because ‘it’s Chicago’. But now, half of kids in their 20’s and nearly a third of kids in their 30’s still live at home with their parents, mostly in the suburbs, and they’re not too interested in heading downtown. I’m an adult and I’m rarely going downtown unless I absolutely have to. And the deal I work with all try to avoid going downtown too.