OP Trustee Marsey thinks OP is not a developer and does not belong in “complex and constricting” real estate transactions. He’s clearly a bomb-thrower. Everyone knows the village is a developer.
He also wants competitive bidding on projects and wants the village to pony up only small amounts and then only for public infrastructure. The village can’t afford any more than that and loses its way when it tries, he says.
He knows more about it than I do. So do others, who disagree with him. But philosophically, he has it right.
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To which opposition-party-candidate Jon Hale responds by email the next day that Marsey’s is a “naive view.” Suburban-downtown redevelopment won’t happen “without local government playing a key role” that might go beyond Marsey’s “small amounts for public infrastructure,” he says. Bigger projects sometimes require “combining . . . parcels,” which is where the village comes in.
Without that, you have “parcel by parcel” development — “new buildings built . . . under existing zoning. In other words, let the free market reign” as the village stands by and watches construction of “$750,000 townhomes and fast-food joints on Madison St.”
Consistency with master plans is what his slate promises, ever “justified on an return on investment (ROI) basis.” Complex as it may be, the board cannot dodge its responsibility to direct economic redevelopment, he says.
More to come on this local-regional-national issue . . .
Day: February 18, 2007
Soft lede murders story, reader interest, read all about it
Rozek and Warmbir give us a marvelous lede in early-on story played big in today’s Sun-Times, invoking a well-known name:
Karolin Khooshabeh worked hard to bring her stepsister’s family from Iran to Chicago, filling out paperwork and giving them money so they could start a new life.
Hey, anything has to do with the Khooshabeh family, I want to know about. This is a murder story, however, in West Rogers Park, and a hammer murder at that. And those two, or their insipid editors, dangle the Khooshabehs before us, here from Iran, which is better known for mullahs and nuclear weapons programs, but what the hey? When your short-staffed, you go for daylight wherever it appears.
So West Rogers is only second-‘graf stuff, and in any case we have here a leisurely approach to a hammer murder in a white Chicago neighborhood, where it’s not a cheap story. Pardon the italics, but sometimes I can’t help it.
Third ‘graf has the nub, all we need to know: “three beaten to death in a bizarre triple homicide,” which is a head, actually, right under the dreadful thumb-sucking editors’ eyes.
Otherwise, S-T this morning is full of extreme-nothing stuff. Mark Brown gives us an easy-going warmed-over Chicago campaign story about an aldermanic challenger — “Alderman’s challenger stumped by the case of the missing mail,” which should read “yet another alderman’s challenger,” etc.
“Curious,” with “an active imagination,” Brown can’t help wondering, etc. about 10,000 pieces lost at the post office. I’m curious too, and Brown has steady work for people who like his approach, but there are mornings when I would like to be punched a little with a strong notion of absurdity. I mean I’d like the copy punched up, not myself. I am punchy enough already.
Not until we go to columns and reviews does S-T manifest even a smidgeon of inspiration on this Sunday. Ann Coulter is slam-banged in a review of one of her books and two others who slam her [no link to be found] — finally she gets banner treatment, after all these years of also-mention “ick” boxed items about her latest. George Will has something good about Guiliani as telling us something new about the Republican base. Opinion journalism not disguised as news story, that’s where it’s at these days.
Blithe Spirit 