We’ve long seen the 62-acre former rail yard that reaches from Roosevelt Road south to 16th Street, and Clark Street west to the Chicago River, as vastly more important than most other stretches of dirt in Chicago.
That’s partly because its history has been so fraught. It has sat there doing nothing for some half a century.
We could use up all our space here talking about planned developments that did not get built there. Tony Rezko, the notorious businessman and political fundraiser found guilty in 2006 of six counts of wire fraud, six counts of mail fraud, two counts of corrupt solicitation and two counts of money laundering, once was in control of the land, tying it to pay-to-play politics, given Rezko’s ties to former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
Amazon, as it played one city off against another for what it (over-) billed at the time as its new head office, teased an interest, too.
Some seven years ago, the developer Related Midwest rebranded the land as The 78 and announced what this newspaper called “one of the most ambitious real estate projects ever conceived in Chicago,” costing $5 billion and including 13 million square feet of skyscrapers and other buildings. The architect was the storied Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and developer President Curt Bailey spoke of a water park, an indoor-outdoor theater and a row of riverside restaurants. Given that Related Midwest was an affiliate of the New York-based Related Cos, which was working on a project called Hudson Yards, optimism ran high, especially since Amazon was still a possibility.
Hudson Yards transformed the West Side of Midtown Manhattan with glittering new buildings, retail and theaters, but weeds still grow on The 78.
Not for too much longer, at least on the northern portion of the site.
On Thursday, Chicago’s City Council approved a $650 million, 22,000-seat soccer stadium funded by billionaire Chicago Fire owner Joe Mansueto, who has said that he can get this thing built and open in about three years. Tax dollars will be needed for road improvements and other infrastructure, but the stadium itself is being fully paid for by one of Chicago’s richest and most civic-minded residents, as is the case a few miles to the north in Evanston where Northwestern University is building another stadium for a different kind of football, this one funded by insurance mogul Patrick Ryan and his family.
These twin projects have served as concrete reminders that not everyone who asks for permission to build a stadium expects taxpayers to shoulder some of the construction costs thereof, and/or offer major tax breaks, an inconvenient confluence for the Chicago Bears, which did not take that approach when the team began negotiations with Chicago. It’s now a virtual certainty that the Bears are headed to Arlington Heights.
Chicago, as we’ve said before, has reason to be grateful to Mansueto — soccer fans in particular, given how much a bespoke stadium is likely to do for the popularity of the beautiful game in the city.
But what really matters most here is the potential for this development, especially if it does right by the Chicago River, finally to connect downtown to Chinatown, Bridgeport, Little Italy/UIC and Pilsen as well as Bronzeville and the South Side. These are among the most diverse neighborhoods in the city; this development can only enhance the potential for housing aimed at diverse young professionals, college graduates the city so badly needs and who so often choose other destinations.
The site has been a gaping land moat up until now, isolating Chinatown from the broader city, especially given how that neighborhood already has been squeezed by freeways. But it now has the potential to push energy and development south, just as the new developments surrounding the United Center have the potential to push energy and development further west from the West Loop. And, frankly, given the problems in the southern reaches of The Loop proper, we’ve come to see that this development should do a lot for the blocks to the north, too.
Neighborhood activists have already started complaining, or negotiating, depending on your point of view. But notwithstanding the history, this thing sure seems like it will get done, and remarkably quickly. Improving the area’s transportation infrastructure should pay off for the city, too.
The big question now is what happens on the rest of the land. We’ve been told by several folks not to “rule out” a move there by the Chicago White Sox in a second stadium, creating a sports complex that one could even imagine becoming a persuasive part of a future Olympic bid. Theoretically, there is room, although it sounds like Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd, will take some convincing. Time will tell.
For now, we’re just celebrating a privately funded project that looks set to score all kinds of goals for the city.
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