Lightfoot urged to embrace $19B One Central development

Mayor Lori Lightfoot was urged Friday to drop her reservations over a $19 billion development over railroad tracks west of Soldier Field with blockbuster potential to grow a shrinking Chicago.

Two days after Lightfoot essentially read the riot act to developers of the massive project known as “One Central,” Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce CEO Jack Lavin rose to the defense of Wisconsin developer Bob Dunn.

Dunn isn’t running roughshod over elected officials and the neighboring residents they represent, he’s embarking on a lengthy process of community engagement, Lavin said.

The Wisconsin developer better known for his stadium projects didn’t go to Springfield “under cover of darkness” to slip authorization for a $3.8 billion transit hub serving the One Central project into the state capital bill, Lavin said.

Dunn simply took advantage of a once-in-a-decade opportunity provided by the capital bill to qualify for a federal program that could provide up to $1 billion in low-interest financing for the project, Lavin said.

“First and foremost, there’s transit-oriented development money in Washington, D.C., that expires Dec. 31. They’ll have the ability to get $1 billion, which the city and state would not get otherwise because it’s for transit-oriented development projects,” Lavin told the Chicago Sun-Times.

“The second thing is the way Springfield works, there’s a capital bill every 10 years. If you miss the boat on that, then you’re waiting a long time. The timing — given the mayoral election and the first General Assembly session for Gov. Pritzker — you had to move.”

Dunn’s Landmark Development wants to put a deck over railroad tracks west of Soldier Field and parallel to Lake Shore Drive and build a city within a city that includes as many as 10 mixed-use high-rises.

The “deck” or “table top,” as Lavin likes to call it, would transform an ugly, 34-acre site that now serves as a “barrier between neighborhoods and lakefront attractions” into a transit center unlike any Chicago has seen.

Metra rail lines, Amtrak, the CTA Orange Line and a so-called “Chi-Line” along an under-utilized dedicated busway would all come together in one location. With trams or buses, Chicago would finally have its elusive downtown “circulator” linking McCormick Place, the Museum Campus, Navy Pier, Millennium Park and downtown hotels.

Landmark Development

Earlier this week, Lightfoot told the Sun-Times she’s not at all certain the transit center should be a priority, given the city’s other more pressing mass transit needs, including a long-promised $2.3 billion plan to extend the Red Line south from 95^th Street to 130^th Street.

The mayor said she was “willing to be persuaded” about the transit center, but only after a process that’s “respectful” to local aldermen and state lawmakers who were “absolutely ignored” in the legislative process.

On Friday, Lavin tried to do just that.

The Chicagoland Chamber was an early supporter of One Central, having commissioned a $60,000 study that concluded the $19 billion project has the potential to produce six times that much tax revenue over 40 years, create 210,000 jobs and turn a shrinking city into a growing metropolis.

“You have a transit hub. This is the only one in the nation that brings national rail, regional rail, local transit altogether in one place. This is not happening anywhere else in the country,” Lavin said.

“Now, we have a unique public-private partnership . . . to help the private sector put the money up, take the initial risk. Then in the end, the state gets the asset. This is a new way of doing it. It’s not TIF” like the $1.6 billion tax increment financing subsidy for Lincoln Yards and “the 78.”

Lavin noted that Lightfoot has established a long-term goal of reversing an alarming black exodus and growing Chicago’s population to 3 million.

“To do that, we need to be bold and innovative. One Central is a way to be bold and innovative,” he said.

“It takes a part of the Central Business District that hasn’t grown [and reverses that trend] . . . The state’s willing to put money in. You might get federal money. The private sector is putting money in. You are creating jobs and investment, which creates tax revenue. And you’re getting other people to help pay for it.”