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.

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