The Action Uptown blog has some
vintage photos of Somerset Place from its heyday. Very impressive! (We were surprised to see a couple photos from UU on there as well.) Ald. Smith is very involved in what will happen to the building, and we're hearing that a restoration to bring back the historical look of the Somerset may be in its very preliminary phases. How amazing would that be? For more on the Somerset's glory days, check out the
Uptown Chicago History blog and
Jazz Age Chicago.
We were contacted a while back by an (unidentified) developer looking for community input on what the Somerset should become. No idea how legit it is, but you can read their e-mail here: Somerset Development.
ReplyDeleteHere is another blast: The Northwest Herald newspaper of McHenry County printed a Feb 9, 2010 story about the politics of the for-profit mental health providers and guess who gets money from this industry? None other than our Illinois House Speaker Madigan and our Illinois House and Senate members representing Lakeview, i.e. Cullerton and Feigenholtz.
ReplyDeleteRead it and weep:
"Critics claimed that campaign contributions from facility owners made it politically difficult to shake them loose from Illinois – even with a state budget deficit climbing toward $13 billion.
The IMD owners’ political action committee gave campaign contributions totaling $147,970 from 2007-09, including $70,000 to House Speaker Michael Madigan and $15,000 to Senate President John Cullerton.
But there were other reasons that the state hadn’t moved more quickly to close mental institutions, said State Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, D-Chicago, who chairs the House panel on human services spending and received $1,000 from the IMD owners PAC.
“Simply stated, not enough community alternatives actually exist, or they are inadequately funded,” she said, adding that Illinois budgeted more than $21 million for supportive housing last fiscal year, including nearly $18 million specifically for supportive housing for the mentally ill.
“If we start shuttering IMDs and nursing homes haphazardly, we risk having a lot of homeless people on the street and big hospital emergency room bills,” Feigenholtz said. “We have to do it right or we risk failure.""