Town home tax

07/29/2009

The City of Chicago departmental spokesmen who failed to answer Chicago Journal’s questions about why town home owners are paying disproportionately more for a new fee on garbage containers can be forgiven. The Daley administration doesn’t have much ground to stand on here, as our front-page story this week reveals. Read more...

Olympic cost

Chicagoans cynical about the budget

07/22/2009

The reaction to Chicago 2016’s presentation Tuesday ranged from fulsome, chest-pounding praise for the Olympic bid, to interest in how small business owners could get in on the 2016 pie, to skepticism that Games here would cost as promised. Read more...

Sell St. Stephen's

07/22/2009

It's beyond time for the InterCoastal Group to get out of the business of barely keeping up St. Stephen's Terrace, the Near West Side affordable housing complex that is both dilapidated and without proper security. Read more...

The new market

07/15/2009

The new farmers’ market at Washington and Maypole is an achievement and its organizers should be commended for their hard work. The challenge now is ensuring the market survives. A big part of that is getting a credit card machine so that low-income neighbors who use Link cards for food purchases can buy there. Read more...

Congress goes federal

Where is that aldermanic prerogative?

07/08/2009

By the time this paper hits the streets, Day One of the bench trial in the case of 520 South Michigan Avenue Associates Ltd. (aka the Congress Plaza Hotel) vs. Alderman Robert Fioretti and the City of Chicago should be done. Read more...

The state budget crisis

07/01/2009

Last week we did two things we rarely do here at Chicago Journal: Delve into state politics and publish an editorial on our front page. We made these calls because the state’s budget is fundamentally a local budget. And if social service providers in our neighborhoods start slashing their programs, we all will feel the impact. Fewer parents will have daycare. Read more...

Where the coyotes are

07/01/2009

There’s plenty of doom and gloom in the newspapers and on television stations these days and Chicago Journal is no exception. Developments collapse, but residents bitterly oppose others. City workers are forced to take furlough days. Our parking meter system gets privatized. Read more...

Don't act surprised

Daley agrees that tax payer cash could fund 2016

06/24/2009

The Daley Administration and its lackeys in the local Olympic organizing committee have repeatedly promised that no public money would be spent putting on a 2016 Olympiad here. Read more...

Reject Congress

06/24/2009

The Plan Commission rejected the Congress Hotel’s expansion proposal in January 2008, citing poor conditions at the landmark South Loop property. The real reason the commissioners denied the application was, of course, Unite-Here Local 1’s political - and moral - clout. The union has been on strike at the hotel since 2003. Read more...

All assumptions are off

Local developments haven't worked out as imagined

06/17/2009

Chicago Journal’s front-page stories this week illustrate how the collapse of the housing market is reverberating. Bottom line: It’s not pretty. All the assumptions the city, developers, buyers and politicians made 10 years ago are dead right now. Read more...