| September 16 A meeting of the Chicago City Council Committee on Finance grew contentious, and several individuals were removed for disruptive behavior. Pilsen residents were present, and hoped to speak on a proposed expansion of the Pilsen TIF District. But committee members Alds. Nicole Lee (11th), Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th), and Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th), who represent the affected areas, deferred the topic to a future meeting. Five wrongful conviction settlement amounts were approved, and the City’s legal team can now attempt to settle these cases out of court. Several community-focused projects were funded, including three affordable housing projects and a new fieldhouse for Kells Park. Up to $30 million in revenue bonds will be issued to finance Prairie District Apartments, an affordable housing project at 1801 South Wabash. The result is to consist of one hundred studio apartments, ground-floor amenities, and community space. The funds are to be used to buy, rehab, and equip the six-story building. A maximum of $15 million in revenue bond funding is also being issued to finance the land purchase, construction, and leasing of another affordable housing project. The new building is slated to be a three-story walk-up apartment building at 4531-4543 West Washington Blvd. Plans call for forty-four units and related common areas. Renters are to be households earning no more than sixty percent of the area’s median income. |
| September 18 At its meeting, the Cook County Board of Commissioners Technology and Innovation Committee approved two contracts, one with HCL Technologies for more than $27 million and the other with Guidehouse for nearly $3 million. The HCL contract calls for the company to supply digital infrastructure to host and manage online services while “playing a crucial role in ensuring the security, efficiency, and compliance of IT operations.” Based in California, HCL is a global company with capabilities in “digital, engineering, cloud, and AI,” according to its website. The contract begins this month and runs through September 2029. Commissioners asked no questions. The Guidehouse contract, which has been in place since 2019, is for retiring the county’s “legacy property tax system.” The Board approved the addition of $1.99 million for Guidehouse to manage the project. The Guidehouse representative estimated the total cost to be less than $8 million. A third company, Tyler Technologies, will work with Guidehouse to provide software. Since the project has been delayed, commissioners asked a number of questions, mostly about how long the project would take to complete and the final price tag. September 30Chicago police stopped using the controversial ShotSpotter technology at midnight on September 22, after Mayor Brandon Johnson declined to renew the company’s contract. At its meeting ten days later, the Chicago City Council Joint Committee: Economic, Capital and Technology Development; Public Safety heard about StarChase, another law-enforcement technology. One public commenter said, “I’m not really for ShotSpotter, but…it’s incompetent to have nothing to replace it.” StarChase is a “pursuit mitigation tool” officers can use to launch GPS-tagged darts that attach to vehicles and allow tracking, according to the company’s website. “We can only deploy StarChase when we have reason to believe a crime has been committed or is being committed,” Oak Brook Police Sergeant Jason Wood told Committee members. The tags can be removed manually, Wood explained, but Oak Brook police have had an “85 to 90 percent success rate when a tag is actually affixed.” Committee members were positive about StarChase. “Really important technology,” said Ald. Anthony Napolitano (41st). “This is a fantastic product,” said Ald. Walter Burnett Jr., (21st). “Can you be accused of racial profiling with it?” Wood replied that “you can always be accused of that.” |
| October 1 At a Chicago City Council Committee on Housing and Real Estate meeting, some Council members had questions last week about the “low affordability community” designation and the associated tax incentives introduced with a 2021 Illinois state law intended to encourage more affordable housing development in high-cost areas. In Chicago, the City Council can designate a project as being located in a “low affordability community.” This allows the owner to receive a property-tax reduction for a certain number of years, so long as they maintain at least twenty percent affordable units on site. New buildings that receive city tax incentives are required by the Affordable Requirements Ordinance to contain a certain percentage of “affordable” units. Previously, developers could receive the incentives by paying a fee or satisfy the affordable housing requirement offsite. Attendees at the Chicago Park District Board of Commissioners Public Budget Forum heard Chicago Parks General Superintendent and CEO Rosa Escareno report that $100 million was being invested in neighborhoods in 2024, including in new field houses in Belmont Cragin and Washington Heights. A goal of the district’s strategic plan is “making the parks the hubs of communities,” in part by keeping costs down so that programs are accessible. Ninety-eight outdoor pickleball courts have been opened, and the district’s goal is to open two hundred more by the end of 2025. Challenges can be expected in 2025, Escareno noted, as the district adds new facilities and acreage, and it needs to find cost savings and develop new ways to generate revenue. The park district is one of several independent “sister agencies” whose individual boards approve budgets (others include Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Housing Authority). For 2024, the Park District’s budget for 2024 is $574.5 million. A budget for the 2025 fiscal year is expected by the end of October. October 3 At its meeting, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks approved a preliminary landmark recommendation for the Erie Street Row building at 161 East Erie. In July, the owners of the Streeterville row house, built in the 1880s, applied for a demolition permit, but the Chicago Department of Planning’s Historic Preservation Division put a ninety-day hold on the request, and it has since been withdrawn. “It’s a very historic building that adds a lot of character to the neighborhood,” Deborah Gershbein, president of the Streeterville Organization of Active Residents told Sun-Times columnist and architecture critic Lee Bey. “We really don’t want to have it torn down.” Preservation Chicago Executive Director Ward Miller described the building’s transition from residential to commercial as a “testament to the creative and adaptive use of such structures,” Bey reported. The Italianate building was one of the first to use limestone from Joliet after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which destroyed many of the city’s largely wooden structures. Its early tenants were mainly artists and creative firms. |
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This information was collected and curated by the Weekly in large part using reporting from City Bureau’s Documenters at documenters.org.