I've said this plenty of times, so here goes again.
When I've gone to a good ballpark, I don't just go to the ballpark. I drive in (or better yet take transit) I visit a restaurant on the way into the park, I visit a bar across the street. I have a beer or two in the park, then another after the game finishes before taking transit back assuming that option exists. If there's another shop, I might browse or walk around, god knows what I might buy.
I have never done that at the Cell/Rate, because there is nothing like that to do. You park, you go to the game, you go home. Reinsdorf wanted his parking revenue, and that comes at the expense of developing surrounding businesses. If I visit the area now that I live outside of Chicago, I stay at a hotel in NW Indiana and drive in, because how many hotels are there at the Rate? The Cell is an island feeding Reinsdorf parking money but with basically no positive impact on the surroundings.
The amount of money being generated by business on the 78 site right now is roughly...zero, and has been for 60 years. No one is dining at a restaurant or staying at a hotel on that site right now. Those businesses are not paying taxes because they don't exist. The fact that those businesses don't exist, and instead you have an empty lot, also impacts the businesses and communities around it, because very few people live on an empty lot and very few people stay at hotels on an empty lot to visit businesses around it. This affects land values and business revenues in the entire surrounding area.
Over a period of..."60 years", which is how long this site has been undeveloped, this is easily hundreds of millions of dollars of lost revenue to the city and state by having the area undeveloped.
What will happen to the Rate site is an open question, because you can't just leave it as an abandoned eyesore. It could be repurposed for a different sport or redeveloped into something else. That has to be part of any plan, but it can be.
If we compare "The White Sox leading development of a community at the 78 site and something positive done with the current location" to "The 78 site has sat vacant as a polluted eyesore since the 1960s and Reinsdorf's ballpark is on an island supporting no surrounding businesses", that is a huge difference in the business climate. That is the kind of change that makes a serious positive improvement on the city and a major increase in tax dollars.
If all the city does is get this site developed, that is a win - and over a 30 year stadium lifetime, that's a win that could be potentially on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars. I have zero issue with that being the city's contribution to this project, because that's a long-term investment in the quality and growth of the city.
This is, in my opinion, what the politicians are asking for when they say "They want a good deal for the city". They understand that they can't expect only private money to develop this site, that's not how things work in a big project like this, but Reinsdorf has to show them why it will be a good deal. He refuses to do this.
I have a problem with "vastly more money being spent than that because we don't want to lose a baseball team", which is what Reinsdorf has instead he deserves.