Let’s all forget that Bulls ring of honor disaster last week.
And, if they are dumb enough to give money, any dollar given must have the precondition that it will be only be given to an ownership group not including any Reinsdorf in any way.
None of the money ever went to Reinsdorf directly.
He’s the managing general partner, with an ownership stake of 19%. (He owns 40% of the Bulls). This is not like the Ricketts or McCaskey or Wirtz families that own outright majority shares of their teams.
...which is now about 10 years old. I understand that as manager of the GP entity he holds a minority stake but has management control, and that there are various limited partners. In any case, the net profit from their collective ownership has to go somewhere, and as I've noted before, the lease for the stadium is very, very favorable for the White Sox. Officially, like many MLB clubs, they say they lose money, but I find this hard to believe in any practical sense. I would guess it's more like someone who owns rental property, like a 16-flat. On your tax return, up top, you have gross rental income and then any miscellaneous income (like laundry or tenant services). Then you have operating expenses related to the real estate, including debt service. For most owners there is gross profit at this point; but then you get to take depreciation, which doesn't literally take cash out of your pocket for the year in question, but for many smaller-scale real estate owners it helps them declare a loss for tax purposes.
McHugh Construction was our largest client, and they partnered with Habitat in construction of some high rent apartment buildings in the city (or something like that). In any case we did some audits relating to ownership of those buildings.
This was before the Tax Reform Act of 1986, so it was even more "open" than it is today for taking investment losses on real estate to reduce taxes.
The most interesting thing was the list of investors. Three I remember specifically in some of the buildings were Jerry Lewis, Buddy Hackett, and Sammy Davis, Jr. I can tell people that now, but back then my boss said not tell anyone who the investors were, and he meant *anyone* outside the firm, friends, family it didn't matter.
Yes, he's the managing partner and the remaining partners get nothing from their investment unless it's sold. They do get access to a box at the park and a golden ticket to get into any MLB game as any MLB owner gets.
My statement was that no public money should go to the build a new park. And then, if they are dumb enough to give money to the project, then it should be on the condition that Reinsdorf sells.
I understand the money wouldn't directly go to Reinsdorf, but if the state pays for part of the project it is equivalent to giving money to Reinsdorf.
Move that ballclub to Charlotte already!
[ducking]
they've already moved the Charlotte ballclub to 35th and Shields.
I'll continue to rely on my good friends and noted masochists El Kabong and Sprack for in-person accounts of the shitshow.
Even I couldn’t take it anymore.
I went to one game earlier in the season, which was a work outing so the tickets were free. Had a great time in the Bullpen Bar!
Dropped the tickets this year and told my rep to call me when the Reinsdorf family and their ilk were no longer involved.
I'm guessing Related pitched Jerry on this
Some fan couldn't have drawn these up in a couple hours
...is it hand-waves away the massive railroad yard on the west side of the river. You won't be able to do anything on that side because that would be impossible to relocate easily.
bother to render the railroad yard because they felt that wasn't part of the build site.
It seemed like picture 3 was designed to show the site in relation to downtown.
Where is ndroman when we need him. I think he does this stuff.
are way too awesome to allow Reinsdorf anywhere near the project to inevitably fuck it up.
I live in Little Italy; there's got to be someone in the neighborhood who could "clean things up."
Did they make you buy some vowels before they allowed you in?
who make it possible for people like them to hoard so many vowels.
...One of our daughters asked me, many years ago, if our last names had two vowels. "Ah...actually, one vowel, and one semi-vowel." I think we'd get about the same pronunciation if it was spelled Brnz.
Where the capital of Moravia is Brno.
But I think my favorite Czech surname is "Vlk" (which means "wolf", by the way).
district covers this lot. It appears they are running point on this project. I pray to God they can get it over the finish line. It would be transformational for the club.
In that you'd get more people to come.
But transformational in that they'd win more games? I don't see anything changing until the Reinsdorf family is no longer part of the organization.
revenue in my view which is always a good thing given that baseball doesn't have a hard salary cap.
Given that Jerry is 87 I tend to look past him at this point. This stadium would put the next ownership group is really nice position to deliver a quality product on the field. Jerry would like it as it would likely drive up the value of the franchise before he sells.
How will this generate more revenue? How can this be a margin plus?
I mean, they have one of the best/most favorable leases in all of MLB. Even if they get more ticket revenue, how much more, and will it cover the delta in costs to play there, which would have to go up.
Just curious how this is a big net win for the White Sox?
From the link, they are middle of the road for revenue from ticket sales, and not so far behind the top 5 ($113M versus $141M) that a new stadium will make a huge difference. I mean if they want to charge Cubs prices, they can try, but even in a new park, it's always going to be different than Wrigley, who has always drawn fans, even when the team sucks (and they get the ancillary roof top revenue too). They'd have to go over the Cubs ticket prices, given attendance, to get to an additional $30M a year in ticket sales.
Like I said, I'm just curious, not saying you are wrong, but that's just not how I've viewed the White Sox situation (as a local resident who doesn't cheer for either team).
I agree it's a great idea, but I'll believe it when I see it and not a nanosecond before.
Looking at a map, the area is bigger than I thought, and includes the St. Charles Air Line tracks that the railroads involved have been desperate to abandon. There'd be SOME room for parking, certainly more than I thought there would be. But they'd need some kind of egress to the south -- Clark & Wentworth would be hard-pressed to handle cars headed for the Cermak exit to 55/90/94.
They'd also need more public transportation infrastructure -- platform expansion of the Roosevelt station, probably a new station on the Rock Island (so much for Lou Jones, although that also serves IIT).
I guess if the Cubs can do it given their land-locked situation -- very little parking, only one L line at the nearest station -- the Sox certainly can pull it off in a more flexible area.
...Cermak. Many moons ago (it seems like, anyway) I appraised some of that land when the City was swapping a tract with Rezko, whose Rezmar company owned a bunch of property down there before Related came on the scene. If you stand at the south end of Wells as currently improved and look due south, you'll see an opening underneath raised Roosevelt Road; that's for the future extension of Wells.
The whole site is about 62 acres, which used to be filled with tracks until about 1970. If they can build the capital needed to construct a stadium, it'd be a far better location than 35th Street. The renderings show all sorts of other new buildings along the river, and anyone could dream that it would become, as Related hopes, another neighborhood (hence, community area 78, adding to the 77 Chicago already has).
However, my caution is to look at a tract that was only about 8 acres, yet took over 40 years to go from vacant land to high-rises: Franklin Point, the tract at the southwest corner of Harrison & Wells. This site used to hold the station for the B&OCT; the structure was demolished in 1971. I appraised it in 1996, 2005, and 2016. The first two times, the proposed developments just never took off. I learned that over the years the site had been proposed for bank back-office use, apartments, condos, hotels, parkland, and at one point a restaurant. I vividly recall standing on this grassy/weedy site looking north with 311 S. Wacker a stone's throw away and Sears Tower looming right behind it, and thinking...why has this piece of land been vacant so long when there are such mammoth structures a block away?
The answer is that when demand is satisfied, it stops no matter what is on the other side. It'd be like asking, while looking at Lake Michigan from the sandy shore, why the same water you see isn't further inland covering everything else. It's because the water has found its level.
Franklin Point finally found demand after about 45 years of dormancy. The 62 acres of the "78" will still take many years to build out, I'd think. If they could manage to build a new Sox stadium that would be a nice anchor.
********
A footnote in the same vein: When Metra built the new Lasalle Street station, the Walsh-Higgins company owned the air rights going for some distance south (as well as the land east of the tracks going over to Clark; you might recall seeing signs saying "23 acres available" back in the 90s). Metra told Walsh to specify where they wanted to place pilings for the buildings they'd build in those air rights so Metra could build the station in a way that would preserve the ability to still construct the pilings.
There was a lawsuit and I appraised the air rights for Metra. The jury awarded Walsh some sum and that concluded my participation in it. But over the years as I've driven along Clark south of Roosevelt I've thought, "Gee...nothing built in those air rights now for the last 10 years...15 years...20 years...25 years...30 years..."
The obvious question also is who's going to pay for it. The Sox got one of the great sweetheart deals on what is now Guaranteed Rate Field (though the state has made money on it) and I can't imagine they'd get anything even close to that deal this time.
then I. My hope is that Related Midwest is clever enough to get this done. In essence they drag Jerry along for the ride.
Related just broke ground on the famously troubled Chicago Spire site this week, so they have the skillset to get difficult projects over the line.
publicly financed stadium leased to him at a nominal amount.
I'm assuming it would at the SW corner. Wonder if they would build it like Citizens Bank Park or PNC Park where you could hit a home run into the Chicago River. Maybe the current would take it on down to Bubbly Creek.
The only way to do that is to orient the park northeast-southwest, which would put the skyline behind the plate, which is the problem with the current park.
if you need to eliminate the obstructed vision seats go for it, but everything else should be the same.
Make me king for a day and it will happen; and I would also force Detroit to build another Tiger Stadium.
was closer to the field than the first row of the upper deck at whatever-the-hell-they-call-it-now.
Not repeating that mistake would be a good starting point for the design.
That the obstructed vision seats with all the posts were the whole reason the upper deck was so much closer to the action. But it made the lower deck seats past the box seats suck. They also don't need an outfield upper deck for no one to sit in.
There's a very easy solution. Buy a plane ticket to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Get off the plane and drive to PNC Park. Observe, and do what they did. Or go to your Giants' ballpark in San Francisco. I've never been there but it looks pretty good too. Add in the old Comiskey good parts like the arches and the scoreboard, and presto!
the scoreboard in play in right is a nice touch and the rooftop bar would go over well in Chicago, I would imagine.
I just hope it looks better than the teal seat monstrosity that was New Comiskey pre facelift.
The whole facelift came about because of the teal seat monstrosity. They were painfully aware of it.
A close friend of mine happens to be a friend of Mike Reinsdorf. Once I was with my friend at a Sox game, pre-renovation, and Reinsdorf the younger stopped by. (I'd never met him before and have met him only once since) My friend asked him about the renovation plans. I asked "what renovation plans"? He said there were renovation plans pending on securing funding that was in the works (which turned out to be the US Cellular naming rights). Reinsdorf, who was in business with the stadium designers who ended up contracting with a number of ballparks that have been built since, went through a litany of things that were done wrong in the original design.
I specifically remember him listing:
1. Too many rows in the upper deck. We're going to remove at least ten of them and put on a roof (happened in the redesign)
2. The seats are the wrong color. They need to be black, the teal is awful. (happened in the redesign)
3. The two rows of skyboxes messed up the upper deck, pushing it too high.
It was then compounded by the club seats, another bad idea. There should have been one row under the upper deck and the second row at the top of the upper deck, like almost all stadiums do now. The problem was it was the first "new design" major league stadium so there weren't better ones to copy, because they saw the mistakes in new Comiskey and so didn't repeat them. And obviously nothing could have been done about it in the renovation.
There were other things I don't recall specifically but those were the main ones. They won't repeat those mistakes.