Outside Agit Prop Makes Confused Arguments About Local Hotel

-posted by chicago pop

All politics, it has been said, is local. It can even be micro-local, so much so that the framework used for understanding what goes on at one level in Chicago doesn't necessarily translate to another level. 

That appears to be the case here. Once again, a hotel project, supported by a number of non-profit local institutions (the University of Chicago, the Museum of Science and Industry), representing the kind of expanded commercial opportunities that a majority of the neighborhood's residents have repeatedly said they want, has been targeted by interests not directly concerned with the neighborhood for use in their own ideological conflict.

Fortunately, they will lose. The hotel, which Hyde Park needs and wants - regardless of conspiracy theories centered on Penny Pritzker - will be built. Said interests will conduct their next skirmish elsewhere.

The hash of an argument presented in the flyer above, although it builds on a handful of genuine concerns, opportunistically mashes them together and forces them to conform to the Procrustean bed of the Occupation Movement's rhetoric. Even more basic, its factual allegations are annoyingly flimsy enough for us to take a few precious moments of our evening to dissect them. 

Were it the summary of a doctoral proposal, we would send its fervent grad student author back to the stacks.

What seems to have triggered this mobilization is the Chicago City Council's decision last month to grant a further subsidy the the Harper Court project of $5.2 million, drawn from the City's amorphous general TIF fund. This was not the first city subsidy, but it was the first since the financial crisis and the emergence of Occupy Chicago. 

What is clear above all is that the creators of this flyer don't like TIFs. TIFs freeze the property tax revenue going to various local taxing bodies, such as school districts, at the level they are at when the TIF is created. Subsequent tax revenue stemming from rising property values associated with a project are used to reinvest in the district, or to pay off the loans raised to pay for it. 

So the $5,200,000 'siphoned' away from the CPS and other municipal services would most likely not have spontaneously materialized had TIFs not existed in the first place, because in many cases (like that of Hyde Park), property values are relatively stagnant and the market is inactive. 

That's not good for school districts, because it keeps property tax revenues down. A hotel hasn't been built in Hyde Park in over 50 years. Growth in local property values has trailed Chicago average by 33%. 51% of existing structures in the district have been cited for code violations. (see p.3, here). Those are the kinds of conditions that can easily tip into a downward spiral of urban disinvestment - and THAT is what sinks local school districts.

More fundamentally, the flyer presumes that the problem of failing urban schools is a dearth of cash. This is deeply questionable. There are many factors going into the failure of inner-city schools, chief among them being the concentration of impoverished families in given school districts. The whole point of court-ordered desegregation policies after Brown vs. the Board of Education was to remedy this demographic imbalance. Throwing money at existing imbalances doesn't solve the problem bequeathed by segregation.

Another reason schools on the South Side are failing is because parents realize they are failing and move away. The result is under-enrolled local schools, like the one in my district. CPS runs a large number of failing schools for only a few hundred students, and this serves neither the students nor the taxpayers. Closing schools to consolidate districts, especially when those schools are underperforming, is by no means a tragedy: it's not that different from certain situations that arose under the system of court-ordered busing.

So when the flyer goes on to suggest that '7 schools from the neighborhood are scheduled to be defunded', it's misleading to suggest that the $5,200,000 could save them if it weren't going to some useless, fru-fru project like a hotel in Hyde Park, the only economic hub in the vast South Side of Chicago. That cash alone won't alter the concentration of poverty in school districts, increase parental involvement in or the valuing of children's education in those same districts, or necessarily improve the instruction they receive from their teachers. It's a simplistic, even spurious linkage.

Theoretically, you could abolish TIF districts and tax the rich all you like, but you're not going to fix the problem that way. 

The more cartoonish aspect of this flyer, however, is the attempt to paint the hotel project as a white elephant resulting from the Pharaoh paying a favor to a nefarious Machine operative, Penny Pritzker, who, from her position on the School Board, acts to divert millions from reinvestment in schools and towards her own business (which her family no longer privately controls) . 

First of all, it was the City Council that decided to funnel this $5,200,000 to the Hyde Park Hyatt, not Penny Pritzker, and not the Chicago School Board. Pritzker had little to do with it. The University of Chicago, as locals know, has been trying to get a hotel built in the neighborhood for half a decade or more, and would have taken a Marriott had not that plan been sabotaged by a truly myopic minority. The City Department of Planning and Development, together with the previous and present 4th Ward Aldermen - neither of them toadies to this or the previous Mayor - have supported the development of 53rd Street as a net benefit to the neighborhood and, by extension, the South Side of Chicago. Nothing in this document provides any reason why this should not be so.

Arguing that the entire project is simply a product of cronyism, a white elephant stemming from a politician's favor to a tycoon, ignores the local history of disinvestment, ignores the dynamics of urban economies, ignores the repeated surveys expressing preferences for expanded local retail opportunities, and above all, ignores the fundamental benefits a hotel would bring to the area -- stabilizing South Side neighborhoods by providing more jobs for workers, more business for local merchants, and a more attractive quality of life for taxpaying families who might decide to move here and commit to local school districts.

So it looks like the Penny Pritzker connection will be a "Gotcha!" one only for weak minds, and for those more concerned to squeeze local particularities into a ready-made ideological template of 99 vs. 1%.

There is undoubtedly a time and a place for that template. But it is not here.

2nd Ward Opposition to Hotel: Déjà vu All Over Again

posted by richard gill

As reported January 4 in ChicagoRealEstateDaily.com, the Unite Here hotel union is working to block construction of a hotel in Chicago’s West Loop area.  It’s a 615-room hotel proposed by Toyoko Inn Co. Ltd.  What a jobs generator this would be, and what a boost to the West Loop area. But Unite Here wants to block it because it says the company plans to subcontract housekeeping work to non-union employers.

Second Ward Alderman Bob Fioretti has been delaying the zoning approval process, although local residents are not opposed. Fioretti must be feeling enormous pressure from Unite Here.  In the 2^nd Ward, the union is trying to pull what they pulled and got away with—in Hyde Park—not too long ago.  The union tried to disrupt a public meeting about a proposed Marriott Hotel. The developer wanted to get the hotel up and running, and employing people. Not good enough for Unite Here. They insisted on an up-front guarantee of a union shop.  The guarantee was not forthcoming, so Unite Here sought to block the whole project.

Neighborhood organizations, the unemployed, the University of Chicago, the Museum of Science and Industry, and the vast majority of area residents thought the hotel was a great idea for the site of the abandoned Doctors Hospital.  A few people who lived in the 5^th Ward’s 39^th Precinct, where the hotel would be built, opposed it.  One of them stood up in public and said the hotel would host alcohol-soaked events whose drunken attendees would spill into the streets.  He gave as an example…..Bar Mitzvahs.

Seeing that the neighborhood was strongly in favor of the hotel, someone in the precinct or the union found a hook: vote the precinct dry.  Only the precinct residents needed to vote on it.  A large city hotel can’t make a go of it without sale of alcoholic beverages in its bars and restaurants.  The union did much of the legwork to get the dry proposition on the 2008 ballots. They managed to do it, and it passed narrowly.  No hotel was built.  The hotel union helped kill 200 hotel jobs on Chicago’s high-unemployment South Side.

Fioretti should support the Toyoko hotel.  Let the union convince the workers to organize, once they’re working.

Read about the 2008 hotel fiasco on this blog. Start at November 23, 2008 and work back through several earlier posts.

Letter From an Old Goat

posted by Richard Gill

In the September 17 Tribune crossword puzzle, the answer to 42 Down is “Old Goat.” The clue is “Nasty geezer,” which pretty well describes me when I read about Hyde Park residents who regard everything in the neighborhood as community property. It makes me want to take my bent spectacles, my crooked cane, and my jug of hard cider over to Medici and snap at passers by.

Here are some examples of what I’m talking about. Remember the dysfunctional clock on the Hyde Park Bank Building? The Bank removed the clock and refinished the wall's surface where it had been attached. And the people said, how dare the evil bankers decide what to do with their own clock on their own building without consulting “the community?”

Then the University of Chicago demolished a vacant building at Harper Court, which it owns. It was known and agreed upon that the building would be demolished. And the Hyde Park Herald said, how dare the evil University begin demolition of its own building without consulting us first.

Now we hear about unhappiness in some quarters that the University repaved an interior driveway deep within the main quadrangle. And the people said, how dare the evil university work on its own infrastructure in a location that is not visible from outside, without getting our permission?

Community relations, civic engagement, good neighboring, or whatever you call it, is a thankless task for businesses and institutions. In Hyde Park, it must be agonizing. Whoever does this work for the Bank, the University, whatever, can’t get paid enough. Every day, they have to deal with Hyde Park, the busybody capital of America. In my opinion, the University of Chicago in particular has been patient to a fault. No wonder they sometimes just go ahead with stuff, as well they should. Otherwise nothing, absolutely nothing would get done.

The University’s board and administrators have a first class school to operate, fund, nurture and protect. Community involvement is one thing, but not the main thing, not by a long shot. In the big picture, it is not necessary for a university to be loved by its neighbors, nor even liked. But at some point, an institution's strident and unreasonable neighbors create a burden and a distraction. If community relations are good, that’s terrific. If not, that’s too bad.

I’m an old goat and a nasty geezer. If I were king of the University of Chicago, I wouldn’t have the patience for this neighborhood’s nonsense. After all, I'd have a great university to run, and I’d tell the neighbors to go to…..to go and fix their own driveways.

Demolition Man: How Hans Morsbach Razed the Hyde Park YMCA

posted by chicago pop

"A vacant lot is not a pleasant site, but at this juncture, it is better than a decaying, dangerous building."*

-Hyde Park Herald editorial, on demolition of the 1907 Hyde Park YMCA in 1983

In light of recent events surrounding Doctor's Hospital, it is interesting to look back to the treatment of another historic building of the same vintage, the Hyde Park Division of the Chicago YMCA, at what is now the Dorchester Commons mini-mall.

Based on the Doctors Hospital episode, you may think you already know what happens when you have a historic, pre-World War I building, a neighborhood landmark that for several generations provided service to the community, that is suddenly shuttered and stands empty for several years.

The neighborhood rallies to save it, the effort is spearheaded by pillars of the community, including restaurant owner and concessionnaire Hans Morsbach, who use an obscure law to outwit a large and bumbling institution, thus preserving the historical integrity of the neighborhood, and keeping out unwanted commerce.

Wrong!

You don't do any of that. Instead, you tear down the blighted building within two years (Doctors Hospital has been vacant for nine). Instead of a labor union, you get the University to pick up your legal costs. And if any so-called "preservationists" make a ruckus and start floating conspiracy theories involving backroom maneuvers by the University, you call in the local newspaper, the Hyde Park Herald, to give you unconditional support and tell them what the neighborhood really wants: Tear down that old eyesore because it's within 1,200 feet of my property!

And you pave the way for its replacement, not by a top-notch building by a famous German or Italian architect worthy of Harper Avenue, but by ... a suburban-style minimall.

Here's what the Herald, that unwavering champion of unwavering community values, had to say about the sad fate of the old YMCA building.

The long-awaited demolition of the Hyde Park YMCA building has finally begun...

It was clear ... to the community at large that the outmoded building could not be salvaged at a reasonable cost. We are pleased that the developer ... has recognized that the community wanted that building removed before any serious incident occurred in this massive property which was becoming a haven for derelicts, thieves, and mischief-makers.

Here is the best part:

We do not give credence to the notion being bruited about the community that tearing down the building was a "conspiracy." If one wants to define a conspiracy in this case as a concerted effort by many people and institutions to keep Hyde Park-Kenwood from becoming a slum, so be it. It is always sad when a neighborhood landmark is torn down. In this case, it is doubly sad because this proud building rapidly deteriorated before our eyes.

Hyde Park YMCA, Front Door
[Source, Hyde Park Herald, June 17, 1959]

The essential details of the story are this: for financial reasons, the YMCA decided to close its Hyde Park facility in August of 1980. By the end of September, the 74 year old building was vacant. By the spring of 1981, a small group of neighbors, among them Hans Morsbach, and represented by the South East Chicago Commission (SECC), filed suit against the YMCA claiming that "the boarded-up property is a threat to their property because of its deteriorated condition," and that it was "an imminent threat to the health and safety of plantiffs, the plaintiff's neighbors, and the surrounding area."

The plaintiffs in the case invoked an obscure municipal ordinance according to which neighbors who lived or owned property within a certain distance -- 1,200 feet -- of an abandoned or dilapidated building could sue the owner to allow for demolition by the City. In 1981, the YMCA came close to finding a buyer, a developer who expressed an interest in gutting the structure and converting it to rental apartments which would include, it was stressed at the time, no Section 8 units.

The deal fell through, the lawsuit was successful, and Morsbach's group had the old building demolished.

Perhaps Morsbach's effort to keep the 1916 Doctors Hospital building vacant for nine years running somehow makes cosmic amends for helping to demolish a 1907 building that was vacant for only 2.

*[Source: http://ddd-hph.dlconsulting.com/cgi-bin/newshph?a=d&d=HPH19590617.1.2&e=00-00-0000-99-99-9999--20--1----YMCA+photo-all ]

Putting Precinct First: Analyzing the Dry Vote

posted by chicago pop

Stony Island Dry Voters

What a study in contrasts: the guy in the big house down the block gets elected president on a stirring platform of "Yes, we can", while the folks on Stony Island win a referendum on a platform of "No, you can't."

While the national electorate delivered a sweeping referendum in favor of change, a few hundred people in one corner of Hyde Park want to keep things as they are, throwing a monkey wrench in plans that might require adaptation and adjustment.

While the president-elect symbolizes the possibilities of racial reconciliation and equality, Hyde Park's own representatives of Liberal activism, almost entirely white, do their best to chase away employment in a predominantly black and low-income ward, one with unemployment rates significantly higher than the national or even metropolitan average.

The concrete results of these grass-roots escapades are that things don't really change much in Mr. Obama's neighborhood, that nothing gets fixed, and that we get to watch buildings fall apart even faster than NIMBY cadres get older. Or rather, like the astronomical costs of CTA maintenance, things simply get deferred, and the folks on Stony Island and Harper Avenue get to live the way they have grown accustomed to living for the last 40 years.

Shabby gentility, Hyde Park style: you can fix it after I'm dead. Après moi, le déluge.

We've said from the beginning that NIMBY-ism is simply the language of self-interest clothed in the rhetoric of "community" consensus. The movement for a dry-vote challenges even this definition, for the following reason: even its strongest proponents made no attempt to speak on behalf of the "community" interest, or the greater good of the neighborhood. Cited as an example of "direct democracy," some dry-vote supporters insisted that those living outside the 39th Precinct simply butt out.

Very well. Residents of the 39th, and their mujahideen, now have 4 some years -- at the very least -- to savor the solitude of their reinforced survivalist bastion.

Meanwhile, things are already changing in the rest of the neighborhood. A few general thoughts on the entire episode and its meaning for the future.

The locus of NIMBY activism is clearly within the 39th Precinct, with a few conspicuous exceptions. The bulk of the action going forward, however -- should capitalism manage to revive at some point -- is going to be north of 55th Street. The major and very minor NIMBY figures have had much less success influencing anything in this area, and they now have much less legitimacy for doing so.

Part of the reason for this is that much of Hyde Park's development drama to-date (including the death of the Co-Op) has been about a dance-of-death, in which the University of Chicago wrestles in a pit of burning sand with the aging folk-heroes and horseless Lawrence of Arabias who are our local activists. The latter thrive on settling scores with the University, and undoubtedly feel that they have scored one here.

But the University is no longer the only player in the neighborhood, and to the extent that our local Robin Hoods continue to taunt the bumbling giant, they will exhaust themselves fruitlessly while truly desirable changes -- both small and large -- occur without their involvement. Indeed, they already are and already have.

These changes offer a striking contrast to the singular record of NIMBY non-accomplishments racked up at The Point, Doctors Hospital, and various smaller sites. William F. Buckley would have been proud of our obstructionists, for in all of these instances, they have managed to "stand athwart history and yell "Stop!"

We can't necessarily blame the 39ers for "putting Precinct first." We just have to remind them that by doing so, it's going to be a bit harder to convince anyone that they can also speak for the "community", or for the greater good of Hyde Park, Kenwood, and the South Side. The laws on our books allow property owners to put self-interest ahead of things like local unemployment, racial equality, public safety, and commercial prosperity. These laws have been taken full advantage of.

39th/5th Prohibition Squeaks By 249 to 228

posted by chicago pop

According to the Cook County Board of Election Commissioners, the dry vote passed for the 5th Ward's 39th Precinct.

It was a narrow margin of victory: out of 477 votes cast, 249 were in favor, 228 were against.

(Thanks to mchinand for the advance link)

We'll hear more on the polling place technical meltdown I'm sure, and analysis on what's next for the neighborhood shortly.

Hairston's Letter To 5th: Vote NO

posted by chicago pop

A letter from 5th Ward Alderman Leslie Hairston, dated Friday October 24, and submitted to but not printed by the Hyde Park Herald, expresses disappointment with 5th Ward residents who she describes as pursuing an "end game" out of "intransigence and bad faith," and that "voting the precinct dry is not a negotiating tool."

Hairston stresses the economic damage to the entire 5th Ward that would result from the actions of a handful of relatively privileged people.

Full text is as follows (original document at bottom):

Letter to the Editor
Hyde Park Herald
October 24, 2008

I am very disappointed that some 5th Ward residents have decided to join with people who live outside the ward in an effort to vote the 39th Precinct dry.

I understand resident's concern regarding the hotel proposal being offered by White Lodging and the University of Chicago at the Doctors Hospital site. I also understand their concern to retain the architectural integrity of the hospital building in any proposed development.

That is why I worked to bring both sides back together at a public meeting, this summer, after White Lodging had walked way from the project. At the meeting, White Lodging tried to allay residents' fears by promising to work with them to come up with a compromise solution. Before we had a chance to see whether White Lodging would proceed in good faith, I learned some residents were circulating petitions to vote the precinct dry.

Contrary to what residents are being told, voting the precinct dry is not a negotiating tool, it is an end game that reeks of intransigence and bad faith. Once the precinct is voted dry, we are stuck with it for at least four years -- until there is another election. No hotels or restaurants will consider moving into a precinct that bans the sale of liquor.

As Alderman, I am also responsible for economic development in the ward. Starbucks did not build its first drive-through store on the South Side out of altruism. It took hard work to convince the company a 5th Ward site would be profitable. Aldi's did not decide to open the first grocery store on Cottage Grove Avenue between 35th and 95th Streets because the company could not find another location. My office had to demonstrate an existing need and that it would be a win-win for everyone.

The Vote-Dry referendum is not a victory for anyone. If it passes, some may believe they really stuck it to the university, but in the end the 5th Ward will be the loser. Not only will no viable development take place on the Doctors Hospital site, but 5th Ward residents will be perceived as unwilling to negotiate on issues where there are different perspectives.

Leslie Hairston
5th Ward Alderman

Hairston gets it right that the rest of the 5th Ward outside 39th Precinct, and the rest of us in Hyde Park, stand to get taken down in a decades-old grudge match being waged by people who are still fighting the fights of 40+ years ago.

Obama wants to get past the cultural politics of 60s dorm rooms; we want to get past the cultural politics of Harper Avenue. Both are dead-ends, outdated worldviews from a previous generation.

The Harper Avenue version, when acted on in the present, leaves holes in our urban fabric, and no longer points to what is best for all of Hyde Park and surrounding neighborhoods.

The Dry Vote: A Vista Homes Fantasia

posted by chicago pop

Calling the Dry Referendum What it Is

posted by Elizabeth Fama

November 6, 2012. Memorize that date, because if the 39th Precinct votes itself "dry" in 11 days, then four years from now is the soonest they'd be able to vote themselves "wet" again. Not only that, it would require putting a "wet" referendum on the 2012 ballot, which means hiring a lawyer like Michael Kasper to file the papers again (will Unite-HERE pay for that?), gathering close to 160 signatures on a petition by going door-to-door on Blackstone, Harper, Stony Island, 57th, and 59th Streets, and then campaigning in the neighborhood to encourage people to vote. Somehow I don't see the current crop of activists going through all that trouble to bring in a new developer. Do you?

That's the little secret that our Born Again Teetotalers, Greg Lane, Alma and Ray Kuby, Jack Spicer, Hans Morsbach, and Allan Rechtschaffen aren't telling you when they say this referendum is a reversible "negotiating tool." But I'm calling them on it. This action is so hard to reverse, and so discouraging to future developers, it's a blocking tool, pure and simple.

An article in today's Chicago Tribune ("Precinct may voting [sic] itself dry," 10/24/08) reports that the judge has dismissed the challenge six residents brought against the dry petition. The challenge was based on signature irregularities and signature-gathering mistakes. As it turns out, the petitioners (some of whom work for Unite-HERE) knocked on an awful lot of doors, and honest intent was the standard the judge used, so not enough signatures could be discarded to remove the referendum from the ballot.

In the Tribune article, precinct resident Ray Kuby says,

"...if you [the university] want to negotiate with us, we do have negotiating power....This is direct democracy. We don't have to go through placating our alderman or anything else. We will just vote ourselves."

He goes on to say that referendum was "not a way to block the project, but would simply put the decision to proceed into the hands of the residents most likely to be affected by the hotel's presence." We've heard that argument before in a few convoluted Hyde Park Herald letters to the editor.

Not blocking the project? Not opposed to all future development? I'm sorry, but that emperor is so naked.

Herald's Chicken: Herald Slams University, Coddles Obstructionists

posted by chicago pop

Herald Reporter Interviews Local Poobah

Inspired by the ongoing financial crisis, I've decided that the best way to deal with NIMBY support for the November "dry" referendum is to package it into a satirical derivative, a collateralized nonsense obligation, which is divided into separate tranches, each with a different insanity rating.

These dubious activist instruments come with high rates of self-interest, and yield significant obstruction. They may also cause long-term, systemic damage to a neighborhood, requiring frequent bailouts from the University of Chicago and Antheus Capital to keep non-insane people from moving away.

Tranche #1 of this week's featured toxic asset is the Herald's failed attempt at journalistic statesmanship. ("U. of C. Must Make Neighborhood Gesture", Wednesday, September 24, 2008)

This asset represents an attempt by our local paper to be evenhanded in assessing the Doctors Hospital controversy. Unfortunately, the Herald winds up giving yet another lap dance to the local poobahs.

"Nobody benefits if the property at Doctors Hospital is rendered virtually unusable." "Nobody is winning in this war of disrespect." "Nobody wins on Garfield Boulevard if the university winds up in a quarrel."

A few sensible lines out of about 530 words, most of which are devoted to slamming the University the way you might blame everything on either the Palestinians or the Israelis, depending on which side you're on.

A more balanced equity requirement by our editorial originators would have called for at least 30% coverage of the more colorful neighbor objections, virtually all of which have been made with extremely high levels of rational leveraging. Some hardball questioning of Pat Dowell's rhetorical posturing to the isolationist elements of her 3rd Ward constituents would have been nice, too.

Which brings us to Tranche #2, the even riskier slice with still higher rates of self-interest: a letter from Hans Morsbach ("Vote Meant to Force Discussion on Hotel"), one column over from this week's Herald editorial.

Morsbach tells us why the scorched-earth policy of our tee totalling Fighting 39ers is exactly what the University deserves:

There have been vague statements by the alderman, the university and the developer but none suggested that reasonable neighborhood concerns will be taken seriously in the future.

Yet to date, in our search for reasonable objections, we have found only the following: 1) a fear of noisy bar mitzvahs; 2) the concern that a Marriott Hotel might "block air flow," if not divert the Jet Stream from North America and into the Atlantic Ocean; 3) that the Marriott was not designed by Helmut Jahn and should be; and 4) that loud hotel parties might make it difficult for people on Harper Avenue to enjoy the sound of passing freight trains in the evening.

As for street parking, here there's no argument to be found: it's a common good, we all pay for it, and you have no more right to it because it's in front of your house than I do. Same with congestion on Stony Island: it's a major arterial, it's meant for traffic, and right now it's empty most of the time.

Obstructed vistas from Vista Homes? Every building blocks someone else's view. They just got tired of complaining about it.

It's looking like this unstable package of "reasonable objections" is in need of a major write-down.

A stalemate usually involves two parties, the same way a bad loan usually involves a greedy bank and a dumb borrower. The Herald has a lot to say about the University, but isn't specific about its opponents.

If the Herald did more than bend over for the pleasure of the architects of this and previous Hyde Park debacles, it might actually help people think for themselves about development and neighborhood politics, instead of being told what to think as they flip to the coupon insert.

Herald Editorial Policy

The Coming Hyde Park Bar Mitzvah Ban

posted by chicago pop

A bar mitzvah ban? For what reason should you want to ban bar mitzvahs?

Ask the guy who showed up at the August 5th community meeting on the planned redevelopment of Hyde Park's Doctors Hospital. Among the many quixotic neighborhood objections to the construction of a Marriott hotel on the site at Stony Island and 58th Street, this one is at the top of the list.

To quote one of Hyde Park Progress' finest field reporters, who heard it all go down:

[T]here was the "threat of alcohol being served on the premises" and [that] it would endanger children who would somehow get hold of the stuff ... [O]ne man stood up and said alcohol would surely be a threat, because there would be Bar Mitzvahs in the function room.

Yes, you read that right. If voters of the 39th Precinct of Hyde Park's 5th Ward (Leslie Hairston) decide to exercise their "local option" to ban the sale of alcohol on November 4, they will effectively be banning the celebration of bar mitzvahs in their corner of the neighborhood.

Along with fun in general, together with the present and future possibility of a hotel with restaurants that serve alcohol, all of which are badly needed in our neighborhood. Through no animus to the Jewish religion, of course; it just seems that, in the eloquent words of this concerned citizen, whose foolishness we will keep shrouded in anonymity, bar mitzvahs are barn-burning, house-thumping bacchanals, where minors get a free pass to get drunk and loudly run around.

Which of course is true, as I plan my son's to be. But residents of the 39th Precinct don't want that. In a way it makes sense. It will be just one more thing that we will have to go and do on the north side, the only place where you can get rooms big enough to host fundraisers for Alderman Hairston, or bar mitzvah's for her constituents' children.

Banned!

The bar mitzvah issue hasn't been the only bizarre concern to arise from the profoundly sagacious bosom of the 39th Precinct.

Over the last year or so, a collection of Major and Minor Activists have advanced worries that the proposed Marriott building would "alter the air flow"; the same Major Activist and Very Minor Meteorologist who made that claim also argues that the hotel would cause an ailment previously unknown to science, called "urban claustrophobia"; and of course there is the complaint that the high-rise hotel would block views from the nearby Vista Homes, views over which no one has any legal or proprietary right.

Among the Minor Concerns heard are threats to the safety of children, obstruction of birds, threats to the safety of children, interference with the magnetic field of the Earth, more threats to the safety of children, and the overall destruction of the quality of life of happy homesteaders who like to park their cars for free on adjacent Harper Avenue, where life is quiet and there are no bar mitzvahs.


The interesting thing about how our devious local NIMBYs are using this legal maneuver is that, in most cases where Chicago precincts have been voted dry, it is to get rid of some liquor retail establishment that locals find offensive. In this case, to the contrary, it is to block any development from happening at all.

Typically, the targeted establishments are bars and liquor stores. Further typically, these establishments are thought to be vectors of crime and disorder, especially in poorer, ethnic neighborhoods. This is one reason Daley has been such an enthusiastic supporter of the local option city-wide.

The nearby 8th Ward, for example, has four local option referenda on the November ballot, as do precincts in the 13th and 19th Wards, both on the South Side. It is interesting to note that, while sensitive urban pioneers fret about liquor in gentrifying City neighborhoods, Chicago-area suburbs have trended away from prohibition, in pursuit of restaurants and the sales tax revenues they bring. The suburbs are more interested in pursuing the mechanics of urbanity than some neighborhoods within the city itself.

Alas, in Chicago, at least on the South Side, folks aren't terribly interested in these connections, or in making them happen. In the Big Sky Country of vacant lots and empty buildings, South Side community leaders have perfected the art, not of making things happen, but of taking things away: elevated spurs, liquor stores, public housing, and, with this referendum in the 39th Precinct of the 5th Ward, the very possibility of new development in the future.

All we need is buffalo to fill the empty space, and we've got ecotourism.

Let's drink to that!

[This post also appears on Huffington Post Chicago]

Hyde Park Herald Gets Uppity Over Promontory Point Swimming Ban

posted by Elizabeth Fama

Rogue swimmer, scofflaw, repeat offender

The Herald's fiery, retro-anti-establishment editorial was, to quote the very frank C-Pop, "A doozy." The editor's tirade over the City of Chicago enforcing the no-swimming ban at the Point is laughable, given that the Herald was instrumental in rejecting the Compromise Plan, which included sanctioned deep-water swimming. As the mouthpiece for the Save the Point group, the Herald has helped to stall the re-building of the Point for seven years. I'm sorry, but it was the original (2001) Task Force for Promontory Point that won swimming rights in the Compromise Plan, not the Holy Point Savers, who have been heard to say they'd sacrifice swimming for aesthetics if the Preservation Gods required it.

And don't get me started on Crystal Fencke's Page One story about Fabio Grego's ticket from the police. She didn't learn a thing from HPP's blow-by-blow dismantling of her previous, inaccurate Point article: she's still dutifully calling the Compromise Plan a "demolition," "concrete-and-steel" plan, even though it reuses all of the existing limestone blocks, and even though any plan will require the revetment to be completely dismantled before it's re-built. But given that her own editor is misleading his readers by pointing to the "monstrosity" between 51st and 54th Street as the design the Point Savers are fighting against, I shouldn't be surprised.

Now on to the Letters-to-the-Editor section, and the strange notion prevalent there that "We've always swum here" somehow means the City shouldn't enforce the law. If only these folks would campaign instead for the Compromise Plan. If people who are passionate about swimming at the Point had been involved all along, we might even have been able to modify the Compromise Plan to include sanctioned swimming on both the north and the south side (currently it's only slated for the south side, although both sides will have the same water-access design).

Finally, I have to just say it outright: the Point has become dangerous. Most of you know I love the place with every cell in my body. But I totally understand the City's quandary: it needs to give out a few tickets every year, just so that when someone is killed or seriously injured, Mara Georges, the City's top lawyer, can say, "Whoa! We've never allowed swimming there! Look at these tickets!"

In that sense, Mr. Grego can consider himself to be the most recent sacrifice to the Point Savers' Gods of Preservation.

Save the Point = Cavity Search for Grandma

posted by chicago pop

Here's a question: what's the best way to get everyone's grandma a cavity search, courtesy of the Chicago Police Department, at Promontory Point?

Ask Jack Spicer or Don Lamb and anyone else on the poetically titled Executive Committee of the Community Task Force for Promontory Point. Because if weren't for them, everyone would have safe, legal swimming at the Point. Right now. Instead, on the Spicer/Lamb watch, the Point has become still more of a deathtrap, and the only real surprises are that no one has died yet, and that the CPD hasn't brought in more paddy wagons to cart away all the scofflaws.

The unwieldy and Kakanian title of our protecting Committee of pustchists attests to a sort of bureaucratic "short guy syndrome": the less of an argument you got, the longer you make the name of your committee. But the fact is, the Executive Committee of the Community Task Force for Promontory Point was offered everything in the Compromise Plan, and walked away back in 2005. Hyde Park's Sharm el Sheik, with its own Yassir Arafat -- in Birkenstocks instead of a keffiyeh.

In the years since this failure of leadership, the Point has become even more of an obvious safety hazard, more swimming grandmas have been ticketed, the clock is only ticking until someone dies on the broken rocks and exposed pilings, and now millions of taxpayer dollars for a "third party" study are going to be spent to essentially determine what we already know: that we need to Fix the Point. Using concrete and steel with limestone frosting.

But what the Army Corps folks who are doing the study (different Army Corps folks, guys from Buffalo, who somehow will have a different paradigm of revetment engineering) stand a chance of not concluding is what all the parties except the Executive Committee of the Community Task Force for Promontory Point were willing to accept in the Compromise Plan of 2003: reuse of all of the existing limestone, and legal, safe, ADA-compliant swimming access to the Lake.

But blowing through other people's money while you try to sort out your own problems is a classic Hyde Park tradition. We saw it up close with the Co-Op, and now we're seeing a gleeful example from representatives of the Executive Committee of the Community Task Force for Promontory Point and their hopes that a Federally funded, taxpayer subsidized study will relieve them of the need to realize how badly they screwed up.

Meanwhile, brainwashing missives worthy of the Myanmar junta, or even its elder Chinese cousin, continue to appear in the Herald, a journalistic zoo where facts roam unchecked, reminding us that the "rescue" and "preservation" of the Point are "in view," and suggesting that the Demolition-Clique, in a secret conspiracy with the exiled Concrete Cartels, had barges offshore ready to dump cement all over, and would have done so, were it not for the vigilance and stewardship of the Executives of our Community and their Committee.

If lack of legal swimming access is what the Herald and all the local grandmas are upset about, then there's clearly a local problem with recent historical memory, and the capacity to put 2 and 2 together. Certainly our local paper isn't helping. Because by now, as should be well-known, we could have had legal, safe, and ADA compliant swimming access, with all the old limestone to look nice, and all the concrete you need to keep Lake Michigan from eating the landfill. Had not the local practice of activism-as-performance-art prevailed.

Herald editors and disconcerted swimming grandmas should refresh their memories, and check to see if they ever put one of those "Save the Point" stickers on the bumper of their car.

Because, if they did, then they're getting what they asked for. Which is the latex finger of the CPD uncomfortably inserted where the sun don't shine.