...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.

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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.