Field of Dreams, meet Field of Schemes
Hang on to your wallets and hide your children
It had been a long time since The 78 had been in the news, but the billionaires who want you to fund a monument to themselves have apparently just been lying low.
The unholy trinity of Jerry Reinsdorf (Forbes net worth, two billion-plus), property owner and convicted Anglo-Iraqi fraudster Nadhmi Shakir Auchi (convicted in France and Iraq, net worth also two billion-plus) and developer Stephen M. Ross of the Related Companies (personal net worth now pushing 13 billion) apparently didn’t give up when the legislature adjourned and said no state money was coming their way. They still had useful idiot Mayor Brandon Johnson acting like the city — the dead broke, worse than broke, in godawful financial straits city — might cough up something to make them happy, so they went into stealth mode to await their public handout of billions.
Or, as it turns out: stealth mow.
What has been going on in back rooms by way of purchasing of politicians we don’t know, but we now do know what’s been going on at the property between the South Loop and Chinatown itself. Real estate site CoStar this week ran some nifty pictures that have since also appeared in the Sun-Times and elsewhere that show Reinsdorf has had workers get a start on the Field of Schemes.
We had family in town early this month and took the water taxi from downtown to Chinatown, right past The 78, but being a geezer and not first thinking of video, I got no shots of the literal urban jungle that borders the river to the left of that picture, so I don’t know if the outline of a baseball stadium was done at that time. But word is Sodfather Roger Bossard was put to work creating the Chicago equivalent of the Nazca Lines of Peru or the crop circles created by mischievous teenagers or greedy farmers all over — shame on you, Sodfather.
(Before learning it was Bossard’s doing, I thought maybe it was a masterful piece of horizontal urban art by Banksy — which would have been a lot more interesting.)
So, anyhow, there it is, the literally down-to-earth version of Reinsdorf’s greedy fever dream. Maybe he and his co-conspirators have gone from “If you build it, they will come” to “If you plant it, it will grow.” Of course, what they hope it will grow into is their famous artist’s conception.
Pretty, eh wot? And all they want is a few billion of your dollars in handouts. And Tax Increment Financing (a once-useful concept so abused by the super-rich as to be a very bad and extremely expensive joke, and one which screws over every other business around it). And a waiver of all sales taxes on the property, apparently forever, again not only financially fatal to the city but totally unfair to every competing restaurant, bar, and whatever in the South Loop, Chinatown, the Loop and beyond.
Not that this has been the only related development (related, see — get the brilliant pun?). The Reinsdorf and Wirtz families this summer unveiled a $7 billion plan to develop the area around their United Center. Strangely, they didn’t ask for public handouts for that proposal to create all kinds of businesses and residences and whatever, which the artist hired for the occasion makes look just as pretty as The 78 would be.
Now, odds are, given their history, the two families will have their hands out very soon. Maybe there’s just a delay to wait for the other begging to be done.
Or maybe investing $7 billion around the United Center really is a profitable idea, so there will be plenty of private funding. But if putting billions into that relatively remote area is potentially profitable, imagine how much more the billionaires could reap from land between the very prosperous South Loop and ever-busy Chinatown.
They probably know they could get even richer paying for the development of The 78 themselves, without TIFs and all the other rip-offs of the people of Chicago. But, heck, why spend their own money when Reinsdorf can just threaten to move the White Sox to Nashville instead?
Of course, given the state of the White Sox now and what it’s likely to be for years to come, as long as Reinsdorf is alive, it’s more a boon than a threat for them to move to Nashville. Or Portland. Or Ulan Bator. And take Jerry with them.