News item: The firm that plans to redevelop the Old Main Post Office has asked the city to provide 51 meeelllion dollars in tax-increment financing to help cover the cost of converting the massive structure into offices, a hotel and condominiums.
After eight years of planning, Chicago-based Walton Street Capital LLC will present its redevelopment proposal for the Art Deco building to the city’s Community Development Commission at a 1 p.m. meeting Tuesday. Key to Walton Street’s plan is its request for tax-increment financing (TIF), one of the largest such requests in Chicago in the past several years.
If approved by the commission and City Council, the TIF subsidy will cover about 17% of the $310 million in total project cost, according to a report prepared by staff of the Department of Planning and Development.
"Without this assistance, the developer would not achieve reasonable rates of return, and therefore, would not undertake the project," the report says.
Walton Street aims to demolish about 800,000 square feet of the 2.5-million-square-foot structure, which straddles the Congress Parkway and has sat vacant since the U.S. Postal Service moved to another facility inn 1996. The firm plans to convert the building into 450,000 square feet of office space, 300 condominiums and a 236-room hotel.
Downtown condos? A new loop hotel? Offices?? Those never make money... what are they thinking? That wacky, risk-it-all entrepreneurial spirit... thank you you wacky risk-taking plutos! We'd all still be living in teepees if not for your devil-may-care, come-what-may, it's only money wackiness...
...
In a TIF district, property taxes are frozen when the district is created and any incremental increase in property taxes goes into a fund used to pay for infrastructure improvements or to subsidize real estate developments favored by the city. The TIF money for the Post Office would come from the Canal/Congress TIF District.
So how much do the taxpayers get back if the thing makes, like, a beeeelllllion dollars? Nothing to see here, move along, etc.? Dat's my guess...
No comments:
Post a Comment