Thursday, April 30, 2009

Live From The Holiday Club

Our readers keep us in the know, even while the events are ongoing. We got this dispatch from the Fix Wilson Yard fundraiser tonight at the Holiday Club:

"Just wanted to let you know that I am currently at the FWY meeting and the room is fairly packed. It is a really great turnout here and people are asking some wonderful questions. Some folks here are from as far away as Hyde Park, with one being a student of the University of Chicago doing a paper for school. Others are from close by in Lakeview and Uptown, both the 46th and 48th Wards. The crowd is quite attentive and there are quite a few younger folks in the early to mid 20s range. I think, with all the meetings that I've attended, this is one of the most successful as far as demographic and interest. I do know that the meeting at the Annoyance was quite a packed house, but this crowd tonight seems much more interested in not just this TIF district, but TIFs across the city. This is only my opinion, but wanted to share this with you."

7 comments:

  1. Uptown Update should add a "like" feature to its articles like facebook has... i would like to say "like" to this...

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  2. Thanks for the beverages. Several urban planners and urban planning students were there. They all mentioned what a disaster this project (WY) seemed to be. "All those poor people in one place?"

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  3. I've spoken with some insiders at City Hall and they admitted embarrassment about WY but couldn't say anything for fear of repercussions. They looked sheepish when I mentioned Aldi's main entrance.

    I was attending the Youth Committee meeting and couldn't make it there last night, but I'm delighted to hear that more people outside the ward are waking up to this as well. This lawsuit definitely needs our support.

    Kudos to all those who are contributing to this, and a special thanks to those who are putting in a ton of time and effort to make this happen.

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  4. I couldnt stop by, but did they mention what the goal of the lawsuit is at this point? No judge is going to halt construction now that they've made it so far.

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  5. Mmmmm ... Beacon, you don't know your Uptown history. About ten years ago, Helen built a "one stop social services office" building at Wilson and Magnolia. Turns out there were all sorts of problems with its legalities, and now it's Magnolia Garden market-rate condos.

    BTW, it was a group of regular residents called (I think) AGORA that brought all the illegalities to the attention of the authorities and stopped Helen in her tracks.

    Let's hope Cook County judges rule on the law and not how fast Walsh Construction can build and lie about the hours they're allowed to be doing so.

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  6. The Burr Ridge law suit was used as an example of one of the possible outcomes in winning the Wilson Yard case. In this case Champ Davis, Davis McGrath LLC (who is also one of the FWY attorneys) won this case for the plaintiff. Similar to WY - construction on a hotel in Burr Ridge was about 1/3 completed. The judgement declared the TIF designation null and void and all TIF dollars were returned to the affected taxing bodies (schools etc.) With the Wilson Yard low-income housing ½ of the budget is dependant on TIF funds the other ½ is low-income-housing-tax-credits which has a completion deadline of December 2010. A disruption to the funding stream could bring this project down.

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  7. Dear God (I just know you also read UU)
    If we win this lawsuit, I promise I'll go to church more frequently.

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