“They know quality. They know design. You don’t want a whole bunch of people who don’t know anything.”
– Ald. Walter Burnett (27th), defending the practice of stacking zoning advisory panels with developers, real-estate agents and campaign donors.
The Trib studied more than 5,700 zoning changes approved by the City Council over the past 10 years and unveiled some of its findings in Sunday’s paper. (Surprise: Money talks.) Today’s follow-up (the source of Burnett’s quote) looks at the makeup of community groups and their influence in the development process.
You should see some of the “design quality” that the aldercreatures in question here consider to be top – flight. More akin to East Germany, circa 1975.
In theory this would be ideal, but in practice the corruption and bs that goes on makes this impossible. Why have zoning and approved urban plans if you have no intention on following them, (while wasting $5MM in taxes to prepare)? These developers are looking out for number 1, and that is it.
Let’s face it, many of these ‘community organizations’ were formed by the developer and their plants so they could tell the city they have community support. At the same time, developers throw their plants a bone on the side, like some extra legal work for an attorney, etc.
On top of that the same developers getting the zoning breaks are the same ones getting the benefits of TIF dollars not appropriataly allocated or tracked, with portions of this ending right back in the alderman’s campaign contribution war chest. This culture starts at the top with the mayor.
The campaign contributions are a joke. There is a certain project in the South Loop where the developer, in attempting to mask his campaign contribution source, made contribution checks from each of his LLC’s, including developments he has in the suburbs and other states, while violating munciple ordinance amounts, which says a developer can not contribute more than $1500. Some of these guys are giving $15,000 by scaming.
If the developers know best, then why do we have zoning? If you really believe it, let’s just become another Houston and get rid of zoning. If the developers know best, this isn’t a problem, right?
Oh, I found a problem in the plan. If we have no zoning, how are the aldermen supposed to get “campaign contributions”?
Thanks for covering this series. I read the first article on Sunday with great interest.
This is the type of story that needs to see the light of day, because for people in the neighborhoods (esp. Bucktown, Wicker Park, and Logan Square) it’s all around them.
Everybody knew Matlak was spot-zoning based on campaign contributions. Now it’s been documented.
That being said, as a resident of Bucktown during Matlak’s heyday, it wasn’t all bad. Design is subjective. As I’ve said before, while the development in Bucktown was sometimes very quick, they didn’t generally dump three and four unit condos with the accompanying 8.5 cars on the streets. Instead, the house highlighted on Sunday on Wood Street (the “French Embassy “) is typical of the Bucktown developments. I can’t condemn them all.