Mouthsider

She really should have brought this up while Jerry was pushing for the 78, right? If there was ever going to be another taxpayer-funded stadium/site for the Sox, it would be a lot easier to pitch it as investing in the existing site rather than building anew on abandoned land in the South Loop. She should have known her time was up when Ishbia put out his commitment to privately funding the new stadium. Lee continues to demonstrate that she is several steps behind. Which stage of grief is “bargaining”, again?

Seems a little too late for this, to say the least.

This, like the “lawyer up” comment, is also posturing by Hintz. There’s no quote from Lee to back up that assertion.

It reads as Hintz making that part up to add stakes. The politicians against this know they can’t make get their way if this blows up into a legal issue. Mike Quigley even said as much when speaking to residents with Lee, Mendoza, Pappas, and others, something along the lines of, “We will not win this if it goes to the courts,” which is a telling statement. Lawyering up would waste a lot of money and only serve to prolong death.

Per the Sun-Times: Bridgeport Bears? Chicago firm releases plans for glitzy new domed stadium at Sox park site This is a little silly, but I thought it’d be worth sharing. Kinda cool to see a professional visualization for an unofficial (and far-fetched) concept.

Indeed. I’ve been of the belief that an environmental study will be conducted and the community will have some level of input since the start of this. Nothing surprising, but still nice to see we’ve finally made it to this point.

It seems this will be the final nail in the coffin for any local opposition. Hard to drum up any doubts when the local community gets to be a part of the process. Kudos to Ishbia/Amtrak for going this route.

Similarly, this part about how the Ishbia brothers decided to put initial prioritization on growing the team fanbase, as opposed to maximizing funds, stood out to me: So it would seem Justin is very much interested in both growing the target audience of the White Sox with a new stadium while also ensuring that us existing fans have the accessibility to continue to support the team and watch/attend games. Wonderful.

You’ve been killing it this week with all the breaking news/most recent info. Thank you!

That one takes the cake, though I’m a fan of this one: Ah yes, the erroneous and biased information that we’re spreading by quoting Crain’s articles.

Shoutout to Ishbia for doing the work that Lee should be doing: asking “What comes next?” after the Amtrak maintenance center goes up and the Sox leave Bridgeport. But to your point, you’re right. That amount of land in that nice of a location is far too valuable to remain vacant. I’m sure nobody in Bridgeport would say no to a large mixed-use housing/retail development.

Wow. I was wondering how they’d work around the change in elevation at the Hallmark site. Credit where credit’s due, that looks beautiful.

It sure doesn’t appear so, which is the most frustrating part of these public meetings. There is a very realistic path for the city to encourage Amtrak to develop on, say, the Global 1 site instead of the Canal St. Yards, but Alderman Lee either isn’t aware enough to do so or doesn’t care enough to try. Regardless, she’s ensuring that nothing is actually being accomplished except generating slight media buzz against the Railyards development. Only God knows what’s going to happen to 35th and Shields (after the Sox move) with her at the helm.

This isn’t an opinion piece; one author is primarily a business and labor journalist, and the other formerly wrote for Crain’s. It’s just a timeline of events/communication between the significant parties involved in the proposed Railyards development. This thread already has a frequent poster of lengthy opinion pieces. I’m not attempting to add any more.