“When I was sitting in Copenhagen and things went south, this moved to the No. 1 slot. We’re way past the look-see stage. We’re in the commitment stage now… They want us at the table. They don’t have a lot of people at the table that can throw in the money that we can throw in.”
– Tom Villanova, president of the Chicago & Cook County Building & Construction Trades Council, on a proposal to kick-start the the Chicago Spire’s construction with AFL-CIO pension investment funds. Spire developer Garrett Kelleher will meet with union officials today to discuss the plan, the Tribune reports.
This sounds like a great investment for the AFL-CIO. As the article mentioned, they will be in “first position” on their 170 million dollar land loan. (Only problem is the land is only worth 40 million). Maybe they hired the same person to negotiate this loan who sold the parking meters.
“Kelleher has never specified the total cost of the Spire, but it is estimated to be less than $2 billion”
A 170$million injection is a small drop in that bucket, is it just going to be a bigger hole after the 170mil runs out?