southsider2k5

Nobody hates the Sox like Sox fans.

Highest Bidder Stadium

When people say worse than last year, I think there is no doubt we have less talent than the start of 2023, but I do think this team is better and significantly deeper than the end of 2023. The last two months were some of the worst baseball I have ever seen. There is a difference between being bad, which I think this team is, and being in a complete free fall, like we saw to end 2023.

So a man who wants no information on his team or activities out there leaked that he is asking for a billion dollars because why?

Why would Jerry leak his own ask to the general public with a figure of a billion dollars?

I wish I could care about the 2024 season even a fraction of the OP.

And I am here for it. So much irrational anger of absolutely nothing. I don't know that I have laughed harder on Soxtalk than reading someone taking artist renderings as some kind of biblical cannon to get big mad about.

Yeah my understanding was this would be a snug fit for a small MLB park, and not enough room for 2X-3X for football.

I think they are still more worried about insider support then they are votes.

This is Chicago we are talking about. When was the last time anyone asked permission for a public spending project of any kind? Hell this is the same place where the Mayor decided he didn't want an airport on Lake Michigan and fucking bulldozed it to make his point. Everything in this city of consequence is done behind closed doors and then they get rewarded with 80% of the vote. Even the super unpopular Olympics bid was done locally by the local pols and business community with about zero care of the taxpayer. Again Jerry Reinsdorf is literally the only person in Chicago to get a brand new stadium built in somewhere around the last 100 years, and he has done it twice.

This off season has given big time collusion vibes.

#1, whether the Sox build there or not, Illinois taxpayers will be paying for around the same amount of whatever project happens there. #2, the ISFA will be funding a ballpark no matter what location they pick, and again, this will be tax funded. #3 Sox fans aren't stupid. They will figure out how to travel the extra 2 miles to a game even if it means using [gasp] more public transit. #4, Neither site precludes the Sox from building whatever park they want. My guess is they ate more likely to get creative in the middle of a broader project like the 78, then in the middle of Bridgeport as it would be an anchor to bigger things, vs just being a ballpark in Bridgeport. Nothing has happened there in 125 years. Why would that change now?

Bauer Talk is over. Cease it all.

I am not doing anything and don't particularly care about it. I am more fascinated by the selective outrage than anything.

Funny you didn't mention Oakland or the LA Raiders... And also, why do you keep associating winning with a successful business project? This just sounds personal.

LA, SF, and California are loaded with TIF districts just like the rest of the country. Your statement is blatantly not true.

I doubt it. It might affect who would negotiate with him, but the quality of the project and his reputation for paying is way more important.

I mean look, is it fair to not like these kinds of deals. It isn't a great system, but it IS the system. We have entire sections of the tax code dedicated to these exact kinds of deals. Literally every major municipality in the country uses these incentives to attract and MAINTAIN business activities in their city. If one random Midwestern City, say one with a population of near 3 million people decided that they would no longer offer these kinds of deals, Literally anywhere else of substance would be lining up to offer these exact deals to them, and this hypothetical random city would quickly bleed out its major businesses.

I think your view how major projects get done in this country is very lacking. There is literally nothing new or groundbreaking here. Save the outrage for someone else

My impression would be that a reasonably negotiated plan which fails to come to fruition shouldn't affect future financing of his projects. Failure to pay? Sure. But negotiations fail a lot, as do projects which can't get off of the ground after an agreement is reach, but before ground breaking.

Nah, there's another word for them.

So your viable proposal is not to subsidize an actually successful business which pushes untold millions of local, county, and state income taxes through 81 games worth of 52 baseball player salaries per year, Sox employees from JR all of the way down to parking lot attendants and vendors, sales taxes on tickets, merch, beer, and food, etc. Nope, not them. But you are going to send untold billions to people who apparently failed in their current business model so that Chicago can flood the real estate market with millions of square feet of high end real estate in a market place that is seeing its exact demographic fleeing the marketplace for decades now benefiting who, exactly? It's either that or seizing the property of said business owners at a cost of billions through imminent domains and related lawsuits so that you can then spend untold billions on remodels so that Chicago can flood the real estate market with millions of square feet of high end real estate in a market place that is seeing its exact demographic fleeing the marketplace for decades now benefiting who, exactly? Yeah, I don't think so.

So the City needs to spend untold billions on residential spaces in a city bleeding population, and simultaneously cut taxes. Makes perfect sense.

Yep. I don't know why we are pretending that this isn't how major projects are done in the US today. And if Chicago didn't do it, someone else would.

Then it sits empty for another 50 years and benefits no one at all.