Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has finally revealed how much Chicago Cubs owner Tom Ricketts will have to pay to expand the Wrigley Field bleachers out ten feet onto public streets: nothing. As the Chicago Sun-Times reports:
The Emanuel administration initially promised an appraisal to determine the appropriate level of compensation.
That’s the normal policy whenever street, sidewalk and alley “vacations” are done for developers.
On Wednesday, City Hall reversed field: There will be no appraisal, because no additional compensation will be required.
A top mayoral aide disclosed that the $4.75 million the Cubs have promised Wrigleyville — including $1 million to build a park on School Street and $3.75 million over 10 years for neighborhood infrastructure projects of the community’s choosing — would be enough.
If you count that $4.75 million as payment, it sounds not great but not terrible — about the equivalent of the $7.34 million the Boston Red Sox are paying for use of Yawkey Way, though that’s also been criticized as too cheap. (I don’t think the Cubs deal would include paying for use of the street for concessions on game days, but the Sun-Times article isn’t specific about this.) Counting it as the Cubs’ fee for taking up street space, though, seems a bit unfair given that it’s already been promised as a team contribution in exchange for other concessions — the Cubs’ own website describes it as a way to “give back to the community and invest in Lakeview’s future” and to compensate the neighborhood for allowing more night games and concerts.
We’d have a better sense of how cushy a deal this is for Ricketts if the city would appraise the value of the land rights, but since Emanuel has said he won’t be doing this, we can only guess. (I’m giving it a 6.5 on the cushometer.) All this is expected to be rubber-stamped voted on after serious debate at an October 16 city council meeting, after which Ricketts can go back to not starting any renovation work until he’s arm-twisted local rooftop owners into agreeing not to sue him. It’s a tough life, but I guess anything’s better than spending the next six months looking at Starlin Castro’s stat line.
If the park on School is the one I’m thinking of, I believe a neighborhood group has already raised a fair amount of funds toward purchase and conversion into a playground (it’s just west of School and Racine).
There’s a strip of concrete next to it that could hold maybe 20 cars give or take. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Cubs ask for that as part of the deal. Figure $25 a throw to park (think you can still park in private lots and garages for about $20, so that estimate includes an inflationary increase for the end of the 10 years) for 20 cars for each of 81 games for the decade and the Cubs make back almost half their park “donation” ($405K).
Pure speculation, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all.
Anyway, this is just a token gesture. It might be ‘not terrible’ relative to the Yawkey Way deal, but as you pointed out, that deal was terrible. For a number of reasons I’ve firmly moved to the “Ricketts sucks” camp. Don’t even care if he makes the Cubs competitive (eventually). I do like baseball, but I’m a transplant here so I will gladly not give the Cubs another dime.
Link below should google map it for you. If you zoom in, you can see the lot half a block down from the red google marker. It’s just an empty space now. The parking strip runs at a diagonal on the east (right hand) side. In fact if you zoom in enough you can see the ‘Help Us Raise Money to Turn This Into Park Space’ Sign along the School edge.
The Sun Times article didn’t seem to specify where the park would be. So again, this is educated speculation on my part.
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=chicago+racine+and+school+map&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x880fd253474a23e1:0xd7dcf20d2c0bd5ef,N+Racine+Ave+%26+W+School+St,+Chicago,+IL+60657&gl=us&ei=46VNUtXCBMn-qAHBz4DwAQ&ved=0CC4Q8gEwAA
They need all the help they can get to help pay for this.
http://www.chicagomag.com/Radar/Deal-Estate/May-2012/Laura-Ricketts-Plans-New-Mansion-on-Wilmette-Lakefront/
The bids for the concrete subcontract alone are around 3.5 million. (They are planning on redoing all the access to the lake and dock structures) All this for two people? Yeah right.
The Cubs are getting upgrades and improvements to Wrigley which is a great thing… plus Joe Giradi could end up leaving NY Yankees and managing the Cubs. He is from Chicago and that would be great news to get Chicago back in the playoffs
I don’t see Girardi getting this Cubs team into the playoffs anytime soon unless he can catch for it. And hit better than Joe Girardi.
Rickets is an ass, and I wish him all the ill will in the world. But the sense of entitlement from rooftop owners is even more obnoxious, so the last thing I’ll ever worry about is whether they can keep mooching off someone else’s product.
Once upon a time, they were a grassroots quirk that added to the ambience of the Wrigley experience. But that ship has long since sailed.
Great site, btw!
Thanks!
The rooftop situation is weird, because the Cubs signed a contract with the rooftop owners a few years ago, effectively legitimizing their business. Chicago Magazine had an article a while back recounted the long, strange legal trip that preceded it, which goes back to the Motorola case about whether people are allowed to send each other sports scores on their pagers:
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/The-312/April-2013/Why-Cant-the-Cubs-Just-Kick-Out-the-Rooftop-Owners/
Either way, I still don’t understand what Ricketts thinks he’s up to: If he believes the rooftop owners don’t have the right to sue him, then he should just go ahead and build whatever he wants. And if he’s afraid that they *can* sue him, then I don’t see where threatening to take his renovations and go home gets him, since the rooftop owners would presumably be just fine with that. Even as bizarre sports team owner moves go, it’s exceptionally bizarre.