Mayor Brandon Johnson said Wednesday he had a “very positive” conversation with White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf about a plan to build a new stadium on vacant South Loop land known as The 78, and called the multi-billion-dollar development the new ballpark would anchor “the way new stadiums should and could look.”
“My conversation with Jerry was very positive,” the mayor said in a news conference after Wednesday’s City Council meeting. “One of the things I did appreciate in our conversation is that what they’re considering, it’s the way new stadiums should and could look. That they have community benefit.”
Johnson added: “We have not gotten into the intricacies and the details just yet. There’ll be time for that. ... But these were conversations that were not happening before. I just hope that this is … yet another display of my leadership.”
As the Chicago Sun-Times was first to report last week, the Sox are in “serious negotiations” with Related Midwest, which owns the 62-acre site at Roosevelt and Clark. It’s the largest parcel in the downtown core, but somehow has eluded development for decades.
A few days later, the newspaper reported Related Midwest envisions using a new Sox stadium as a catalyst for a development that will breathe new life into downtown Chicago, serving as a southern anchor.
Ald. Nicole Lee (11th), whose Bridgeport ward includes Guaranteed Rate Field, where the Sox play now, came away from a meeting Friday with Reinsdorf, Sox stadium operations chief Terry Savarise and Curt Bailey, president of Chicago developer Related Midwest, with the feeling that the Sox were as good as gone from Bridgeport.
Sources familiar with the plan fleshed out the developer’s vision: residences, offices, a hotel and dozens of restaurants and bars along a reinvigorated south riverfront. To the south, a school and a University of Illinois research center known as Discovery Partners Institute.
Many questions remain, including how much Reinsdorf would be willing to contribute and how much public financing would be needed — given that demand for public resources is high, public appetite for bankrolling stadiums is low and Gov. J.B. Pritzker has reiterated his longstanding skepticism about public funding for stadiums.
Using money from a tax increment financing district created five years ago to bankroll infrastructure projects at The 78 also could be politically perilous for Johnson, who has promised to rein in TIFs and lucrative subsidies for developers.
Turning to Ciere Boatright, his new Planning and Development commissioner, whose appointment was unanimously confirmed by the Council Wednesday, Johnson declared: “Commissioner Boatright, we’ve got a little work to do.”
Gaza cease-fire resolution
The mayor also made it clear he supports a resolution demanding a cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas, and encouraged Ald. Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez (33rd), chair of the Council’s Committee on Health and Human Relations, to continue negotiating the specific language of that resolution with Ald. Debra Silverstein (50th) the Council’s lone Jewish member.
“As I said from the very beginning, the violence that broke out several months ago — I condemn the actions of Hamas. But at this point now, I believe we’re looking at 25,000 Palestinians that have been killed during this war and the killing has to stop. So, yes, we need a cease fire,” Johnson said.
The question is not whether a cease-fire resolution will pass the Council, but rather, which one. The two sides have been circulating vastly different versions.
Johnson said he’s “grateful” Rodriguez Sanchez agreed to the demand by more than two dozen colleagues to postpone Wednesday’s vote on the cease-fire resolution to provide more time to find language acceptable to both sides.
“That’s one of the challenges that we have in this country. We don’t speak to one another. Not enough. And then when we do, we’re simply bringing our biases to the conversation.”
Boos as Holocaust resolution is discussed
Tensions evoked by the war between Israel and Hamas were on display again at Wednesday’s Council meeting.
As Silverstein rose to talk about the resolution she sponsored commemorating Saturday’s 79th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, she was booed by a pro-Palestinian crowd in the chamber and in a glassed-in third-floor gallery.
Exercising what he said was an “incredible amount of patience,” Johnson called for order repeatedly but did not order ejections. He directed alderpersons to “look at me” without acknowledging the jeering crowd.
“Disruptions should not happen. Under no circumstances. They should be respectful of all voices that are being heard, but democracy still prevailed today,” the mayor said after the meeting.
“That’s important — that even in the midst of very strong and rigorous debate — even when people feel attacked — they don’t have to panic. I don’t.”
Dollar store restrictions delayed, settlements approved
The Council also postponed consideration of an ordinance that would have prohibited new or expanding dollar stores from locating within one mile of another dollar store.
Alderpersons also signed off on more than $7 million worth of settlements. The largest — $5 million — will compensate the family of a 64-year-old man left for dead by first responders on the floor of his West Side apartment, then found alive by his grandson more than four hours after those emergency medical technicians had left without administering emergency medical care.
