Spend the dog days of summer digging into TIF

07/31/2009 10:39 AM

By Micah Maidenberg
Editor

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Why go to the beach when you could spend August combing through obscure legal documents? That's the question! /Image courtesy Wikipedia.

After a little stalling, the city council unanimously passed the TIF Sunshine Ordinance this April, a bill that required the city to post more information about tax incremement financing districts that now cover a substantial swath of Chicago.
Yesterday, the Department of Community Development posted the data, including the most recent TIF district annual reports, redevelopment agreements and other files, which are all in PDF.
Now I need your help.
The Near South and Near West sides of the city are covered in TIF districts and redevelopment agreements, too many for me to comb through by myself with any degree of quickness.
So I'm asking readers to pick a TIF district in our coverage area (see below), read through the last annual report (how many millions do each of these districts hold?) and redevelopment agreements, and e-mail me with any names, trends, spending or, in the case of the redevelopment agreements with private developers, compliance stipulations or covenants in the contract.
An example of the latter point:
In the TIF redevelopment agreement the city struck with South Loop developer Central Station Dev Corp, Section 3, 3.21 says the developer "agrees to make provision for affordable housing withing the residential rental units constructed in high-rise structures on the Property" such that when the project is complete, "a minimum of 20 percent" of the rental units will available as affordable housing.
Central Station, says Section 3, 3.21, however, shall "not be required to provide any of the affordable housing units in the absence of state, federal or locally assisted financing programs."
Such stipulations in the redevelopments could suggest new story ideas for Chicago Journal. Or maybe not. The point is to know: to review the reports and agreements and shed light upon them.
Interested?
Here's what to do.
Pick a TIF district to review from the list below, and e-mail me at [email protected] letting me know which one you've chosen. I'll start a spreadsheet to keep track of who is doing what. We can talk about how to comb through the files in greater details. Maybe we'll find some interesting stuff.
Here's the list of TIF districts I'm interested in:


Any takers? Let me know: [email protected]

UPDATE 5:00 P.M. August 3
First, an acknowledgment: the inspiration for this post came courtesy of Brad Flora, proprietor of WindyCitizen.com, a site that allows users to submit news stories and Web links and vote them up or down. At a TIF panel discussion this spring, Flora suggested getting people together to analyze TIF documents. More soon on that front. In the meantime, thanks to everyone for writing in.




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By Missing TIF Projects from South Loop
Posted: 07/31/2009 12:52 PM

Great job Micah. Interesting that the Near South TIF project list seems to be missing Sommerset/Roosevelt Hotel project you have reported on.