southsider2k5

Give it another year or two, most of those guys will be selling real estate.

Billions of dollars.

I definitely won't call it 100% after reading up with some people I know on this side of the state line, but I am going to say they feel around 80/20 right now.

The tax dollars being applied to debt payments are a tax on ticket and hotel sales right now. No idea what happens if the team leaves.

-The Chicago White Sox game day experience is documented as one of the worst in baseball. That isn't just one rando's opinion on a message board, but the opinion of pretty much anyone who partakes baseball on a multi-team level, as the Sox routinely rank in the bottom 3 or 4 in MLB in these categories. -If you have any kind of crowd at Sox Park, they do restrict access to the lower level, so no, you can't just "walk around" the whole park unless the circumstances are right, or you pay for a more expensive ticket. Also I yearn for the day when the Sox game is important enough to stay in your seat for, versus paying that kind of money to wander around the ballpark. -The whole line about "fans who want to continue drinking... can just get in their car" is a wild statement in a day and age of OWI laws. The whole idea is to NOT have to drive drunk. -We have been over the remediation stuff a million times, so I am not sure why it keeps coming up, but all of this stuff has been known, literally since this site shutdown. I have no idea why you treat it like some kind of earth shattering occurrence, but within a city like Chicago, there are so many Superfund and Brownfield sites, it would make your head spin. Remediation of these sites isn't an abnormal thing, and environmentally it is a really good thing that it is happening, as it keeps that crap from leaching into the water table, Chicago River, and everything else around the site. Everyone knew it would be expensive and extensive, and STILL people have made plans to build there, so it obviously isn't a deal breaker to everyone. -Its the same thing with traffic patterns. We keep getting told how horrible it will be, but again, they know what they are up against on this site. Plus there are more things that can be done with public transit to access the site, as many major transportation hubs are much closer to here than 35th and Shields. There is no reason that public transit can take on the lions share of what is basically a local fan base. They do this at Wrigley Field with zero parking literally 81 times a year. The New York teams handle this as well. Ever notice there isn't a single parking garage around Madison Square Garden? There will be WAY more parking here than any NYC based stadium. This has all been factored in.

Like I said at the beginning, Indiana will sacrifice pretty much anything to win this

And no amount of sad little laugh reacts to substitute for lack of substance changes that. There are plenty of pros and cons to be discussed for all projects, but some of this just wanders in the personal and bizarre.

And on 219 day. That's hilarious. Welp, hopefully the Chicago pols answer for it.

Which goes back to your original Kvetch about projects cancelling and why nothing has ever happened there. For a site that requires additional expensive remediation, it drives up the needed economic and financial impact of what happens there. For a site that is going to cost 8/9 figures to clean up, you aren't going to justify a 2500 square foot single family dwelling going there. It's why they are looking for 9/10 figure projects to build there, so that the ends justify the means. There aren't that many huge projects to go around, and huge projects are notoriously difficult to get off the ground and finance. Again, how many times have there been projects for the tallest, or 2nd tallest skyscraper in Chicago that have failed. Hell, the hole from the Spire still sits on the northern end of downtown. It isn't because the site required remediation, it was because the economics didn't make sense, and definitely not because of some conspiracy involving arms dealers. Block 37 went through a ton of iterations over decades before finally seeing that mall get off the ground. As I have said previous, this isn't nearly as complex as you want to make it out to be, and you could probably seek your own advice about repeating your own opinion ad naseum if you are sick of seeing the same responses to it.

If they stop it from happening, the Bears leave IL. It is that simple. It's probably a play to try to extract gains, but the Bears hold the cards here.

They literally cannot by law. The last renovation is why they still owe money, not because they weren't paying the payments. The pandemic crushed expected revenues is the other problem.

Pretty much this. Look, I know some people need a safe space where mindless drones all repeat the same mantra's, but that is half the beauty of the game in that we all don't need to be the same to enjoy what we do of the sport. The team still has a LOT of work to do, and years to get there, but as long as we aren't backsliding, it is moving forward, which is what you need right now.

I have hope for the Ishbia era based on their actions in Phoenix, but as long as Jerry is the chairman, Walter is in charge.

They COULD, but if Jerry is in charge, they won't. Hell they just had to go beg to get $40 million to sign this contract which was a fraction of what was expected. If the bidding adds a zero, do you expect the Sox to be involved? I sure don't.

Look, when Jeff Dunham does his show, he might keep changing puppets and personalities, but at the end of the day, it is still the same puppeteer running the characters. Until Jerry is out of the picture, I am going to assume the White Sox will operate the same way they have for the last 45 years.

This is a team coming off of it's 3rd straight 100 loss season. It is the definition of not a winning formula. Realistically, it should be in talent accumulation stage, and if Murakami is anywhere near the contract he thought he was getting before he came to MLB, it isn't going to come from the White Sox. Losing him for nothing isn't a winning formula either.

I will also note one aspect that isn't talked about is if both the Bears and the Sox do something that doesn't involve the ISFA, that is a whole lot of tax money that all of the sudden can be redirected for something else. We will see if they both happen, but I think Illinois becomes more open to negotiations on other things if they can redirect those ticket taxes to something else.

The public aspects of this are a lot less important if the park itself is self financed. All you need from the state is potentially infrastructure and/or a property tax negotiation.

I can't see Moore coming back.

And yet, as I said, here starts an expensive project doing just that, with the end goal of a stadium going up on this site, almost as if that it can be done on the 78 site.

Because if he is good, he is leaving in two years anyway, so you get what you can get for him.

Not to mention the less separation there is between the players, the most chance of negotiating some savings and pushing it out to multiple picks over the draft. You obviously take "your guy", but if you can save a couple of million in the process, that is an extra 2nd round pick's worth of money. It could allow you to push a pick in the 20's down to the 2nd round, and it could still leave you enough extra money from other savings to add another HS pick at the end of the draft or after round 11.

This is a good thing, despite the belief of some.

We rode Robert from a Ferrari to a 86 Toyota Corolla with 500,000 miles on it.