The idea of a new White Sox stadium on the river just south of downtown seems to be moving at the speed of a Bobby Jenks fastball, with the proposal going from closed-door talks to a virtual endorsement from the mayor in just two weeks.
The ballpark would anchor The 78, a 62-acre development site along the Chicago River south of Roosevelt Road. Residences, a hotel and dozens of restaurants and bars are also planned.
“My conversation with [Sox owner] Jerry [Reinsdorf] was very positive,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said after last month’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.”
But the mayor and the Sox better start making that benefit clear pretty quickly, especially if the stadium is to be publicly funded in any way.
Because the way it looks now, the deal that would best benefit the public is the one that the mayor, Gov. J.B. Pritzker and other top elected officials should be talking about, but aren’t: keeping the Sox at Guaranteed Rate Field.
In addition — and rather than taking what’s being handed to them — the city and the state should also investigate having Guaranteed Rate’s owner, the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, turn the 70 acres of surface parking lots surrounding the stadium (which is more land than The 78 holds) into a real neighborhood.
A brand-new home
The sudden outbreak of New Stadium Fever is understandable. There was open speculation last December that the Sox were pondering relocating to Nashville when their Guaranteed Rate lease ends in 2029.
Reinsdorf later dismissed such talk as untrue. A month later, the Sun-Times broke the news that The 78 could be the team’s new home.
The proposed stadium deal would benefit Related Midwest, with the developer looking to build a new neighborhood on The 78 site.
The Sox and Reinsdorf would certainly make out. They’d get a smaller stadium that’s easier to fill than Guaranteed Rate Field, with an upscale neighborhood growing up around it.
And having Chicago’s telegenic downtown skyline as a backdrop within view is just gravy.
Still, from an urban planning standpoint, it borders on civic insult for Reinsdorf to desire moving to The 78 and helping redevelop that site, when he squatted on the Guaranteed Rate parking lots for a third of a century and blocked their redevelopment — aided and abetted by the ISFA — thanks to a lease agreement that allows Reinsdorf to keep gross receipts from income generated by the parking lots.
Sure, The 78 is potentially a more attractive site, but that was helped along by Reinsdorf and the Sox fumbling the one they have, from the original design, right down to making the field face southeast — away from the downtown skyline the team now covets so.
The city and state officials should think long and hard before helping reward the team for such blunders, particularly when it could come at the expense of the South Side and the Armour Square neighborhood (and nearby Bridgeport) that has been the Sox’s home for 114 years, counting the time at old Comiskey Park.
Besides, adjusted for inflation, the current stadium’s 1991 construction price, plus the cost of the 2001 to 2007 renovation, amounts to $485 million.
That’s a fair amount of money, although not in the billion-dollar stratosphere of the current generation of ballparks.
Still, with that much cash invested in a neighborhood, it seems unseemly to let the team just walk away, no questions asked. Especially if there’s no plan for the stadium’s future.
In a statement sent to me last Thursday, Ald. Nicole Lee (11th) said she is “committed to keeping the Sox” at Guaranteed Rate Field.
She also said her office is putting together a working group that is examining improving 35th Street, “turning an eye to how we can make it attractive to the team and to the neighborhood as well.”
That’s a wise move, whether the team stays or goes.
Whither Guaranteed Rate?
If the Sox move, what should happen to Guaranteed Rate Field?
The baseball-less venue could be used more often for concerts, other sporting events, or maybe — just maybe — housing.
Indianapolis converted an old ballpark, Bush Stadium, into 282 apartments while retaining the stadium’s exterior, ticket booth, scoreboard and playing field.
Andre Brumfield, the top urban planner at the Chicago office of the architecture firm Gensler, said a new use for the stadium could be part of a larger plan to improve 35th Street eastward to the lake.
“I’m thinking about this not only as an opportunity for [Armour Square and] Bridgeport, but I see this as really an opportunity for the larger South Side as a whole,” he said.
Keeping the team on 35th Street and making the same improvements might well accomplish the same thing.
But the shame is we may never get to find out.
Lee Bey is the Sun-Times architecture critic.
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