Lincoln Yards, Amazon and the Gilded Age of Corporate Power
We live in an era where the biggest and wealthiest corporations and CEOs in history continue to demand lucrative taxpayer handouts in return for jobs and investment. The recent $6 billion boondoggle for Lincoln Yards, courtesy of the Chicago City Council and incoming Mayor Lori Lightfoot, will put in countless resources to build roads and infrastructure for Sterling Bay’s future gated community adjacent to Gold Coast.
This is not a blighted area, not a project that will guarantee the most marginalized parts of the city any advantage, won’t address Chicago’s increasing acute affordable housing crisis or great depression levels of unemployment in the black community, and will not bring back a rate of return to recoup the funds for the city anytime in the near future.
So, when business interests decry the loss of jobs when Amazon walked away from New York City recently, they ignore the anger most people feel towards big companies that demand subsidies for projects that will have windfall profits regardless. The Sterling Bay deal is no different.
Photo and caption from Chicago Tribune article 'Community groups to sue over Lincoln Yards tax subsidy:' People opposed to the Lincoln Yards development protest in Chicago on Wednesday, April 10, 2019. The City Council has approved up to $1.3 billion in TIF money for infrastructure work in and around the project. (Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune)Additionally, the $500 million in TIF funds projected to go into this project would otherwise go to our schools, parks, libraries and city services. That money alone could lower class size to 25 students per class, and provide a nurse, librarian, social worker and restorative justice coordinator for every single public school in Chicago.
It is time for Chicago to join the movement led by our sisters and brothers in New York by denying wealthy developers and companies, like Sterling Bay and Amazon, blank checks. Instead, we should double the taxes on millionaires and corporations proposed by Governor Pritzker to recoup the money we have lost from subsidizing them over decades.
We must deny the rich and powerful these blackmail payments in order to restore critical services for main street, not pad the already bulging wallets of Wall Street.
Community groups to sue over Lincoln Yards tax subsidy
John ByrneChicago Tribune, April 16, 2019
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-met-lincoln-yards-tif-lawsuit-20190416-story.html
Community groups opposed to a tax subsidy tied to the Lincoln Yards development will sue the city to try to stop the deal, they announced Tuesday.
The Grassroots Collaborative and Raise Your Hand plan to file the suit in Cook County Circuit Court, arguing Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration failed to meet state rules for tax increment financing that stipulate the property tax diversion program only be used in blighted areas where development wouldn’t occur without the infusion of public dollars.
The City Council last week approved up to $1.3 billion in TIF money for infrastructure work in and around Lincoln Yards, slated to be built on 55 acres along the North Branch of the Chicago River near the tony Lincoln Park and Bucktown neighborhoods.
Grassroots Collaborative has complained there isn’t enough affordable housing included in the 14.5 million square feet of office, residential, hotel, restaurant, retail and entertainment space planned for Lincoln Yards. Raise Your Hand, a Chicago Teachers Union-aligned public school advocacy group, says a big chunk of the tax money should instead be earmarked for Chicago Public Schools.
Critics of TIF have for decades questioned how former Mayor Richard M. Daley and then Emanuel administered the TIF program, which freezes the amount of property tax money paid to taxing bodies such as the city and the school district for up to 23 years while directing additional money collected as property values increase to instead pay for projects within the boundaries of the TIF district itself.
While critics frequently have complained that wealthy developers were reaping the benefits of public money to bolster their projects as needy communities have seen too little benefit, the Lincoln Yards development has galvanized TIF opponents because of its sheer size and the fact it’s to be built in such a prime spot.
Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot said during her campaign that the process to approve Lincoln Yards and another massive TIF outlay for The 78 project in the South Loop were rushed and not transparent enough. But last week, she helped the proposals win City Council approval by first calling on aldermen not to vote on them, then assisting their passage by getting the developers to agree to include more contracts for minority- and women-owned businesses.
Some activists say the concessions Lightfoot won don’t go nearly far enough, and the TIF deals should be scrapped or completely reworked. Lightfoot said she believes there will be further chances to hold developers’ feet to the fire as the projects proceed.
jebyrne@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @_johnbyrne
