chicagobusiness.com - 385 views
If he's to earn a new term, if Chicago is to get what it deserves and needs, this mayor is going to have to take some of the energy and focus that went into the abortive Olympics efforts and direct it elsewhere.
Where? Greg Hinz looks at where.
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I think Hinz importantly identifies that Chicago's competition is "Paris or London, Madrid or Tokyo". The argument that "Hey, we aren't Detroit" does not cut it, and in fact never did. Chicago has never been a one-product town and has been an important financial center for a long time. While comparing the city to the Rust Belt may boost the collective ego, comparing Chicago to other "global cities" shows the amount of action that still needs to be taken. Of course that action doesn't seem forthcoming since, as Hinz also mentions, we are out of money.
I'm highly skeptical, though, that a downtown casino is the right way out of this. I think setting up a government monopoly that invites corruption is the kind of top-down thinking that Hinz criticizes elsewhere in the piece.
It's also disappointing that Hinz never mentions TIFs.
> It's also disappointing that Hinz never mentions TIFs.
In this piece, I mean.
True. Any attempts to improve Chicago are probably going to need a massive reform of TIF districts, that is unless at this point they are such a mess that they really aren't worth saving.
I'm also skeptical of the casino idea.
I'm working on a post for my blog about the TIFF's. Poring through the Progress Illinois posts about them, as well as the Reader's work. Working on a lot of research right now and trying to formulate some salient points. Hope to have something in a few days. It's pretty hard not to believe the system is absolutely massively flawed.
Yeah, I think the TIFs are key. They make it really hard to talk about appropriation of development money, like Hinz is trying to do here, because almost all of it is locked up in TIF budgets that aren't part of the City Council's budget debate process. They basically make it impossible to have reasonable discourse on what our priorities should be.
TIFF's appear to most stimulative in those neighborhoods such as the Loop central business district & the South Loop (or SOLO) neighborhood where development may have progressed, albeit @ a slower pace.
Imagine the Chicago Loop caught up in the exploitation movie scene reminiscent of the 1970's. Stimulative TIFF funds have levered millions of dollars in private investment to replace the aging cinemas with a new Theatre District.
My personal experience with South Loop development begins with several residential loft conversion developers who tackled abandoned manufacturing buildings in the 1980's. When renovation costs encouraged new construction, developers such as Frankel & Giles, Gerald "Gerry" Fogelson & Rockford native Daniel McLean stepped up with the construction of high rise residential buildings which grab the attention of Chicago Bears' fans & Museum campus developers.
Would we have seen the gentrification of Chicago's Loop & SOLO District in the 1990's without infusion of TIFF financing?
Perhaps.
But as fellow financial analysts well know, reducing a project's initial investment with TIFF tax money makes it easier to wait for future cash flows & makes it easier to bet millions of private money on a world class result.
Consider conferring with a source who understands how financial present value calculations make the leverage of public tax dollars crucial to whether a developer will proceed with a project.
Simply criticizing this diversion ignores the vital needs of targeted communities & development potential.
Windy Citizen's TIF map, compiled by Daily Daley contributor Adam Verwymeren:
http://www.windycitizen.com/chicago/politics/2009/10/08/what-should-dale...
Very good points. And all items worth considering. I'm not sure anybody's exactly arguing against the existence of TIFFs, and what they are capable of providing. It is pretty confounding, however, that the TIFF budget is running a huge, nearly billion dollar surplus while the City and CPS are running massive defecits that they tell us demand tax increases. Similarly confounding, are situations such as with Willis, who got $3.8 million in TIFF funds to do interior build outs of their offices in the building they had just bought. There are good things there. But there are also major issues.
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