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Sox looking at building in South Loop


southsider2k5
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7 minutes ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

Say what you will about Jerry, and guys like SSHM are doing that, but this is a brilliant deal and proposal taking into account the real things politicians care about (perception and development). Even if it extends where the tax goes, no "new tax" is an easy sell, and residents don't pay hotel tax so it's mostly subsidized by tourists.

Those other things SSHM mentioned are already in place and no one complains about them or knows about them. 

Pritzker gets to stay true to no new tax on his watch for billionaires stadiums.

Johnson sheds the soldier field debt and essentially politically trades it for the development of an area the city has been after for decades. 

Jerry gets to maintain his sweet heart deal and use found funds to further subsidize his new stadium absent debt.

https://wgntv.com/sports/white-sox/report-reinsdorf-to-seek-1-billion-in-public-money-from/amp/

The original lie of no new taxes was already exposed with the release this afternoon. The ISFA can’t cover the much smaller existing debt with the vastly under projected revenue streams, let alone $1 billion more.

Today Jerry proposed to extend the existing hotel tax by 30 additional years. He also proposed a new $400 million tax district to keep $400 million in stadium and development sales tax receipts. So nobody gets anything but Jerry for this development until the 2060s, when it’s time for the Sox to demand a new $18b stadium (inflation / entitlement).

The Sox, Bears and Politicians made the same “we’re going to pay this all off in 30 years” lies in the 1980s and 1990s. The state and city had to pay huge subsidies on top of all the hotel taxes just to cover interest payments the past two decades. They borrowed $399m for Soldier Field in 1994 and owe $388m today.

Nothing was paid off.

Enormous resources were lost.

And the Bears are leaving.

The city and state will both eat nine fugues in addition to forgoing all hotel tax revenue plus $400M, plus the ongoing and growing shortfalls in just paying interest.

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11 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

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

What’s sitting empty the next 50 years in Chicago and much of America are trillions in worthless office space and retail space, i. e. much of downtown which has been a ghost town and the office workers are not recovering much beyond their current levels.

The city needs to focus on converting as much dead office space as possible into residential, and start getting a handle on crime and taxes so that there are people and retail will take up existing space.

Lincoln Yards was given $2b in handouts, and they haven’t built anything because there is no demand for anything, and won’t be until the massive glut in excess space begins to wind down.

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4 minutes ago, South Side Hit Men said:

What’s sitting empty the next 50 years in Chicago and much of America are trillions in worthless office space and retail space, i. e. much of downtown which has been a ghost town and the office workers are not recovering much beyond their current levels.

The city needs to focus on converting as much dead office space as possible into residential, and start getting a handle on crime and taxes so that there are people and retail will take up existing space.

Lincoln Yards was given $2b in handouts, and they haven’t built anything because there is no demand for anything, and won’t be until the massive glut in excess space begins to wind down.

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

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5 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

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

Not proposing new government subsidies to convert. Stabilize taxes, restore adequate public safety. Invest in our neighborhoods. As real estate stabilizes to a proper equilibrium, projects will be viable without the combined $3.5b handouts proposed by Jerry and handed to LY. 

Make Chicago an attractive place to visit and move to, like it was perceived to be the previous four decades before the government lockdowns and significant increase in crime the past four years.

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This is the Royals' current proposal...in comparison.

"There are still unanswered questions remaining. The entire funding picture for the project remains a bit vague, with the team asking Jackson County taxpayers to extend the 3/8 cent sales tax another 40 years to raise about $350 million, the team pledging to pay the $1 billion costs of the ballpark district, and the remaining $650 million for ballpark funding unaccounted for."

royalsreview.com

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2 hours ago, South Side Hit Men said:

Not proposing new government subsidies to convert. Stabilize taxes, restore adequate public safety. Invest in our neighborhoods. As real estate stabilizes to a proper equilibrium, projects will be viable without the combined $3.5b handouts proposed by Jerry and handed to LY. 

Make Chicago an attractive place to visit and move to, like it was perceived to be the previous four decades before the government lockdowns and significant increase in crime the past four years.

So stabilize taxes while spending untold billions and magically eliminate remote work? Makes sense to me, that’s how math works based on a couple of the exams I just graded.

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1 hour ago, Balta1701 said:

So stabilize taxes while spending untold billions and magically eliminate remote work? Makes sense to me, that’s how math works based on a couple of the exams I just graded.

The math works without magic in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and the rest of the world including for Canadian teams competing in our domestic leagues.

 

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5 hours ago, South Side Hit Men said:

Not proposing new government subsidies to convert. Stabilize taxes, restore adequate public safety. Invest in our neighborhoods. As real estate stabilizes to a proper equilibrium, projects will be viable without the combined $3.5b handouts proposed by Jerry and handed to LY. 

Make Chicago an attractive place to visit and move to, like it was perceived to be the previous four decades before the government lockdowns and significant increase in crime the past four years.

 "Chicago" as used generically refers to a mega metropolitan area so it is always helpful to define terms. The City of Chicago  experienced white flight beginning in the late 1960s.  That hollowed out neighborhoods in many ways with aging dilapidated housing and public schools, and the closing of  retail businesses and manufacturing companies which removed jobs and killed the tax base. The chances of reversing that and reinvesting seems to be as unlikely as Israel rebuilding Gaza for the Palestinians. It's not going to happen.  For example, there is no desire by those living in the suburbs and beyond to invest in Chicago's inner city neighborhoods other than hiring more cops.

Everything people talk about now divides people along partisan battle lines drawn by the media who in turn, profit from it. Remember how many opposed Chicago's bid for the Olympics, largely along partisan lines? Any new stadium proposal that requires public funding will likely face similar hurdles.

 

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8 hours ago, Balta1701 said:

The reason why you’d do this as a taxpayer isn’t baseball, it’s because a state of the art ballpark would be an anchor tenant to develop this site.

Hopefully, with the attitude of the governor and most modern politicians, this is now a case where Reinsdorf telling the government “give me this money or I move my precious team to Nashville” winds up with them quickly saying “You can take I-65 the whole way.”

Furthermore, if he’s negotiated with the developers who own this site, told them he could get this done, and pisses off the state by demanding a big fat payout for his precious team, that won’t sit well with any developers for financing in Nashville either.

If he wants this to happen, then he needs to go to the government and show them honestly how putting $1.5 billion into things returns $3 billion in value to the city over the next 30 years, and with honest, non-Trump style valuations and reasonable occupation estimates. Showing off reasonable renderings of the entire site and making Chicacago look good is a minor step in this process, but it’s one we’ve seen.

Thus, the government break even in the short term and gets the major long term benefit of the site developed.

If Reinsdorf can’t demonstrate that, then yeah the state should nicely wave goodbye on moving day. This amount seems high to me, so yeah they better be able to offer a high quality justification better than “baseball is good”.

They will build office towers, which are now dinosaurs. Apartment buildings where most new apartment buildings are half full.  And they will be high rent, so those renting in Linoiln Park, Streeterville, the Gold Coast, might move there. So those neighborhoods lose out. Build some bars and restaurants. If people go there, they will be spending money they would have spent elsewhere.  Will they get a grocery store? That would be nice, but a good portion of the south side is currently a food desert, and apparently there are no public funds to build a few.

jerry got a park built for him 35 years ago. To his speciations. Now  he can’t make enough money, please build him another one. They offered him development in the GRF parking lots. He said no, He makes money on the parking spaces. The state did build him free of charge a team store and restaurant. And JR gets all the profit.  Unfortunately that isn’t enough for JR to compete  with the Clevelands , and Kansas Citys , and Detroits  and Minnesotas. 
 

The economics part is all a play on words. No new tax, yet there is a new debt that has to be paid with  tax money. Hotel tax, locals don’t have to worry about it.  Except when there are shortflalls, and with bigger debt, potentially bigger shortfalls. Plus the sales tax there goes to paying down Jerry’s park? There goes the argument that the new neighborhood would be a boon for the city and state.Jr and the developer have many billions of dollars. They have the TIF money. Do the rest themselves.

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7 hours ago, South Side Hit Men said:

Not proposing new government subsidies to convert. Stabilize taxes, restore adequate public safety. Invest in our neighborhoods. As real estate stabilizes to a proper equilibrium, projects will be viable without the combined $3.5b handouts proposed by Jerry and handed to LY. 

Make Chicago an attractive place to visit and move to, like it was perceived to be the previous four decades before the government lockdowns and significant increase in crime the past four years.

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.

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9 hours ago, South Side Hit Men said:

What’s sitting empty the next 50 years in Chicago and much of America are trillions in worthless office space and retail space, i. e. much of downtown which has been a ghost town and the office workers are not recovering much beyond their current levels.

The city needs to focus on converting as much dead office space as possible into residential, and start getting a handle on crime and taxes so that there are people and retail will take up existing space.

Lincoln Yards was given $2b in handouts, and they haven’t built anything because there is no demand for anything, and won’t be until the massive glut in excess space begins to wind down.

That is…not why they haven’t built anything.

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1 hour ago, southsider2k5 said:

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.

It wouldn’t really be high end real estate as you’d have to either make weird shapes to get people access to windows, or create lots of windowless condos.

OR - you could go into a public private partnership to start pulling more residential right next to the loop to at least help support its retail and restaurants as the solutions are figured out.

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9 hours ago, southsider2k5 said:

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

Cuz Jerry knows It Takes A Village (Idiot) to pay for all of this and it darn sure ain't going to be Jerry. I don't know the answer to all of this but it's going to take a lot more smoke and mirrors to git er done. 

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3 hours ago, Dick Allen said:

They will build office towers, which are now dinosaurs. Apartment buildings where most new apartment buildings are half full.  And they will be high rent, so those renting in Linoiln Park, Streeterville, the Gold Coast, might move there. So those neighborhoods lose out. Build some bars and restaurants. If people go there, they will be spending money they would have spent elsewhere.  Will they get a grocery store? That would be nice, but a good portion of the south side is currently a food desert, and apparently there are no public funds to build a few.

jerry got a park built for him 35 years ago. To his speciations. Now  he can’t make enough money, please build him another one. They offered him development in the GRF parking lots. He said no, He makes money on the parking spaces. The state did build him free of charge a team store and restaurant. And JR gets all the profit.  Unfortunately that isn’t enough for JR to compete  with the Clevelands , and Kansas Citys , and Detroits  and Minnesotas. 
 

The economics part is all a play on words. No new tax, yet there is a new debt that has to be paid with  tax money. Hotel tax, locals don’t have to worry about it.  Except when there are shortflalls, and with bigger debt, potentially bigger shortfalls. Plus the sales tax there goes to paying down Jerry’s park? There goes the argument that the new neighborhood would be a boon for the city and state.Jr and the developer have many billions of dollars. They have the TIF money. Do the rest themselves.

Most new apartment buildings are half empty? What are you guys even talking about?

Occupancy in Chicago at any new buildings built in the last 15 years is right around normal rates. Chicago is not empty or barren. Tourism hasn't left --- a I noted 100 times, tourism is right at record highs.

Converting office buildings into residential, in many cases, isn't even reasonable or efficient --- it would cost more to convert them because of piping/bathroom/kitchen challenges than it would to just start fresh.

This site also is majority residential in the proposal so I'm not sure what the issue is.

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Illinois and Chicago has been printing out millions ($250M this week) for illegal migrants.  Where does this money come from?  Where is the ROI?

 

There should be no fuss if ~ $150 from every tax payer of the State of IL (12.7 population) contributes to a stadium with a great South Loop ROI (both Sox and Bears).

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1 minute ago, DFAthewave69420 said:

Illinois and Chicago has been printing out millions ($250M this week) for illegal migrants.  Where does this money come from?  Where is the ROI?

 

There should be no fuss if ~ $150 from every tax payer of the State of IL (12.7 population) contributes to a stadium with a great South Loop ROI (both Sox and Bears).

Can't say this enough that while it's state tax dollars, this is mostly tourist dollars funding this.

Could we use the money for something else? I guess, sure.... but it's not as if this state has been putting my dollars to the best use over the past 30 years.

Edited by Look at Ray Ray Run
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58 minutes ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

Can't say this enough that while it's state tax dollars, this is mostly tourist dollars funding this.

Could we use the money for something else? I guess, sure.... but it's not as if this state has been putting my dollars to the best use over the past 30 years.

If this was several years ago when Wrigley was going through its reno and Ricketts determined Wrigley Field was not salvageable, and came up with the same plan. I’m guessing most of the people who think this a good idea for the state, and several of them don’t live in the state so couldn’t crare less how IL spends its tax dollars, would be up in arms.

i am a White Sox fan. I think the site is better than the one they are at now. I go to games and this would be closer. I work in the loop, above Union Station and this would be very convenient during the week. Everything about it is great except who pays. It would be shameful to give JR this money with all the things that need fixing in Chicago alone, and while he already has a viable home that he helped design.

Edited by Dick Allen
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3 hours ago, southsider2k5 said:

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.

How are the White Sox or Bears a successful businesses in terms of what they do on behalf of the city or state?

These billionaires screwed the city and state to the tune of over a billion dollars the past 35 years, and both want to f*** over the politician and citizen rubes for billions more.

Your brilliant argumemt is to hand out another $1.5B to the Sox in order to capture several million annually in Sox income tax, and pump temp 80 day slave wage jobs.

Jerry already proposed not paying sales tax for decades in his proposal, won’t pay a penny on property tax, and hasn’t contributed anything the last few decades because nobody wants to watch the team he destroyed the past forty years.

I get this is a Sox message board, but the vocal people who support anything he demands plus a cherry on top don’t live here, and won’t suffer any financial consequences.

Go petition Lake County Indiana to give the Sox $1.5B, because few here want any piece of this frankly obscene and immoral proposal. Wished the worthless Bears moved to Gary in the early nineties. Chicago would have several hundred million more to benefit residents. Wouldn’t have to go to the pawn shop to sell parking meters, the skyway, or attempt to pawn the airports. The city is dead broke even after selling off our future, and can’t provide basic services, including athletic facilities and instructors at public parks and schools.

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6 hours ago, tray said:

 "Chicago" as used generically refers to a mega metropolitan area so it is always helpful to define terms.

Chicago refers to the City of Chicago. That was evident from the reference to neighborhoods in his post, along with 'the city' in prior ones. If he meant Chicagoland, he'd have said so. 

Edited by soxfan18
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5 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

What leverage does JR have?  Taking the Bulls AND Sox elsewhere would be idiotic when the Bulls are such cash cow.  He's really not even held accountable for winning or signing superstars in their prime.

What do the Bulls have to do with this? JR is the head of an entirely separate ownership group for them. 

The Sox aren't leaving, but in a world where they did, the Bulls wouldn't go with. They're tied to the Hawks through the UC Joint Venture.

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13 hours ago, southsider2k5 said:

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.

Question for you (or others who know finance).

If the company that owns the 78 plot was generally working on Development, Reinsdorf comes in and says “add a ballpark and we can get this deal done”, everything gets to this point, and then Reinsdorf demands so much public money that they can’t justify it and the government balks, blowing up any deal for the site - does that affect Reinsdorf’s company long term? Like does it ruin his ability to get funding and loans for construction in Nashville? 

It seems to me like it should but I don’t know enough finance to say that for sure. Would it turn out to not matter because he could always get a Saudi loan or something like that?

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3 hours ago, bmags said:

That is…not why they haven’t built anything.

No, but all this smoke and mirror s%*#, the faux $4B in “new economic activity” is merely shifting stadium income two miles north and office and residential demand one-two miles south to 78, and creating large costs to salvage what already exists.

The only way significant revenue is generated from the new stadium itself is to gouge everyone one buying a ticket and overpriced junk food and MLB replica cheap ass clothing inside. I’m completely fine with that, but it should be based on a several dollar tax on every ticket sold to pay off the debt, and a lien placed on the club to guarantee the bonds, not an abandoned stadium as collateral if they move or fold, until the bonds are paid in full.

Also, these “failed real estate businesses” stated by the other one were caused by years of absurd lockdown policies that didn’t do a damn thing, and that states and cities thriving now passed on this destruction in the Summer of 2020, years before the meme people here did the same.

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5 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

Question for you (or others who know finance).

If the company that owns the 78 plot was generally working on Development, Reinsdorf comes in and says “add a ballpark and we can get this deal done”, everything gets to this point, and then Reinsdorf demands so much public money that they can’t justify it and the government balks, blowing up any deal for the site - does that affect Reinsdorf’s company long term? Like does it ruin his ability to get funding and loans for construction in Nashville? 

It seems to me like it should but I don’t know enough finance to say that for sure. Would it turn out to not matter because he could always get a Saudi loan or something like that?

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. 

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22 minutes ago, South Side Hit Men said:

How are the White Sox or Bears a successful businesses in terms of what they do on behalf of the city or state?

These billionaires screwed the city and state to the tune of over a billion dollars the past 35 years, and both want to f*** over the politician and citizen rubes for billions more.

Your brilliant argumemt is to hand out another $1.5B to the Sox in order to capture several million annually in Sox income tax, and pump temp 80 day slave wage jobs.

Jerry already proposed not paying sales tax for decades in his proposal, won’t pay a penny on property tax, and hasn’t contributed anything the last few decades because nobody wants to watch the team he destroyed the past forty years.

I get this is a Sox message board, but the vocal people who support anything he demands plus a cherry on top don’t live here, and won’t suffer any financial consequences.

Go petition Lake County Indiana to give the Sox $1.5B, because few here want any piece of this frankly obscene and immoral proposal. Wished the worthless Bears moved to Gary in the early nineties. Chicago would have several hundred million more to benefit residents. Wouldn’t have to go to the pawn shop to sell parking meters, the skyway, or attempt to pawn the airports. The city is dead broke even after selling off our future, and can’t provide basic services, including athletic facilities and instructors at public parks and schools.

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

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