Wolf Point Update: Reilly yanks proposal from December Plan Commission agenda; schedules Third Public Meeting

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 In an email to his constituents, 42nd ward alderman Brendan Reilly announced he has requested the Chicago Plan Commission defer consideration of proposals for the development of Wolf Point from its December agenda.  Instead, he will be calling a third public meeting on the evening of December 20th to review the revised plan.

Since deferring this item from the November Plan Commission Agenda, I have spent the past week meeting with the City of Chicago's planning and infrastructure departments as well as representatives from the River North and Fulton River District neighborhood associations to evaluate the new details recently released by the Developer that call for a hotel use and the potential for additional residential units on the site.

Although Hines/Kennedy have been aggressively lobbying for a process that would allow them to secure all necessary city approvals by the end of 2012, in light of the recent events, I have informed the development team that their preferred timeline is simply no longer feasible. As a result, I have again requested that the Chicago Plan Commission defer this item from its December 20th Agenda, for the purpose of vetting new information related to the Bulk Table for the site and to allow for a much-needed sixth revision to KLOA's traffic study.

Reilly yanked consideration of the three-building project from the November Plan Commission agenda after, as reported by the Chicago Reader's Ben Joravsky, documents obtained by Friends of Wolf Point uncovered a request for up to 1,800 hotel rooms on the site that had never before been part of the developer's documents or discussions.

Reilly, whose ward includes most of downtown, including Wolf Point, invoked his aldermanic prerogative to request the delay in consideration.  In his Thursday email, Reilly said that in the latest "Bulk Table" defining the developer's request,  the maximum hotel "keys" requested is now down to 450. The maximum allowed construction is now listed at slightly over 4,000,000 square feet, with a maximum of 1,410 residential units and 1,285 new parking spaces.

Reilly said the revised plan submitted by Wolf Point Owners LLC, representing the Hine Interests and the Kennedy family, which owns the land, not only included the previously unmentioned 1,800 hotel rooms, but "did not include the long list of previously negotiated changes and improvements to the proposal" originally submitted in May.

You can read Reilly's complete statement after the break.




Wolf Point Project Deferred Again, Off December Plan Commission Agenda
New Traffic Study in Works; Bulk Table Revised; Third Public Meeting Scheduled

Dear Neighbor:

I am writing to provide you with another update regarding the Wolf Point Proposal. As you know, last week I had this project removed from the Chicago Plan Commission's November 27th Agenda. I made this decision after previously undisclosed details were revealed by the Developer just one day before the November 27th public hearing. To make matters worse, the Filing did not include the long list of previously negotiated changes and improvements to the proposal.

Since deferring this item from the November Plan Commission Agenda, I have spent the past week meeting with the City of Chicago's planning and infrastructure departments as well as representatives from the River North and Fulton River District neighborhood associations to evaluate the new details recently released by the Developer that call for a hotel use and the potential for additional residential units on the site.

Although Hines/Kennedy have been aggressively lobbying for a process that would allow them to secure all necessary city approvals by the end of 2012, in light of the recent events, I have informed the development team that their preferred timeline is simply no longer feasible. As a result, I have again requested that the Chicago Plan Commission defer this item from its December 20th Agenda, for the purpose of vetting new information related to the Bulk Table for the site and to allow for a much-needed sixth revision to KLOA's traffic study.

We expect to receive an updated traffic study from KLOA next week, at which time I will dissect that study with the traffic engineers at CDOT to ensure the proper data and methodology were used to provide us with a realistic forecast of the revised traffic impacts associated with the details contained in the Bulk Table. 

Please click here to review a copy of the most recent draft of the Bulk Table, which reflects the past week's negotiations with the Developer. 

When reviewing the revised Bulk Table, you will note that we have dramatically reduced the maximum allowable hotel rooms on the site from the 1,800 rooms the Developer attempted to incorporate into their plans last week - down to a maximum potential number of hotel keys on the site to no more than 450 rooms. 

It is important to note that we are also requiring the Developer to memorialize a commitment that any potential hotel on the site will be a Limited Service Hotel (not a full service hotel) that does not include any conference or ballroom space. This is quite significant because a Limited Service Hotel has far less impact on parking needs and traffic circulation than a full service hotel does.

In the interest of providing full transparency, I will also be co-hosting a third public meeting in conjunction with the River North and Fulton River District associations on the date the Developer had otherwise hoped this project would be approved by the Chicago Plan Commission: Thursday, December 20th. 

Based upon the piecemeal manner in which information and important project details have been shared with the City of Chicago, my office and the constituents I represent - I have determined that this third public meeting is absolutely necessary to ensure all parties have a chance to better understand the Bulk Table and resulting traffic impacts. It is important to me that you have adequate time for review and comment on the revised proposal.

I want to also inform you of the additional, extraordinary layers of process that I will require of the Developer for Phase II and III of the project, moving forward. Phase II and Phase III will now require an additional trip to the Chicago Plan Commission for a public hearing (with opportunity for testimony and public comment) at which time members of the Plan Commission and infrastructure departments will review the specific details associated with the construction phase and make suggestions and revisions to the plans to reflect the infrastructure realities that exist in real-time when the towers are to be built.

Requiring these additional hearings before the Chicago Plan Commission is uncharacteristic of how we process all other planned developments downtown and throughout the City of Chicago. Phased developments are usually only required to submit plans for a Site Plan Approval which is processed administratively by city staff and is entirely hidden from public process. I have directed the Developer to memorialize those mandatory trips to the Plan Commission in their revised planned development documents.

I have also insisted upon an additional layer of transparency and review that is not typically required in phased developments. We are requiring that the Site Plan Approval documents must also include an updated traffic study based on data that reflects present day conditions at the time of construction for Phase II and Phase III of the project. This will ensure consideration of new or unanticipated development in the area that exists at the time of Site Plan Review.

These additional requirements are not common for the approval of phased developments in Chicago. The City does not require a new traffic study to be conducted as part of their official Site Plan Approval process. However, based upon the uniqueness of this site, the complexity of this proposal and the track record of the Development consultants, I feel obliged to require these additional layers of accountability on behalf of the constituents I was elected to represent.

By deferring this item from the December 20th Plan Commission Agenda, you will have more than a month to react to the revised Bulk Table and to review and digest the sixth revised traffic study that contemplates the "worst case scenario" of potential uses on the site for Phase II and Phase III. As soon as we have a vetted traffic study that passes muster with CDOT, I will distribute it broadly.

Once we have secured a meeting room and a start time for our third community meeting to be held on the evening of December 20th, I will share those details with you directly. Please "Save the Date" for this December 20th meeting. I hope you will consider joining us for another public review of the Wolf Point proposal.

Sincerely,


Brendan Reilly
Alderman, 42nd Ward

 had been  after revealed that developers were asking for approval for up 1,800 hotel rooms, a request that had never been a part of previous documents or discussions.

The Death of the Newspaper: Here, Let me Help

 click images for larger view (and apologies to Stanley Tigerman)

I knew it was coming.  The announcement was made last fall.

Still, it was with a bit of rue that I opened my home delivery bill from the Chicago Tribune to find that charges have more than doubled - up 122%, the latest brainstorm from company management, and proof that gross stupidity didn't leave the building with Sam Zell.  No explanation on the bill, just a message about how much I must be enjoying the "additional 40 pages of weekly coverage,"  every one of those pages costing me more than a nickle each.  What a bargain.  Somehow I don't recall the Trib dropping the rates when they shrank the physical size of the paper several times over the last decade or so.

If any more proof were needed of the complete contempt in which the Tribune holds its subscribers, consider this:

• You can't cancel your subscription via mail.
• You can't cancel your subscription via email.
• You can't cancel your subscription on the Tribune website.

When I tried to log on the website, I was told that my email - the same email at which the Tribune has been sending me bills the last eight years - was "not found.  Please try again.  Your frustration amuses us no end."

When you call the 800 number printed on the bill, you go into automated response hell.  "Let me look up your account.  Is your address .................  three.....zero......zero?" What? That's not my address.  It's the street number.  Should I just press "1" for yes and take my chances?

OK, I guess that's what they wanted. The automated voice instructs "If you wish to discontinue you service, Press 4." With a complete lack of confidence that anything good will come out of it, I press 4,  only to find that at the Tribune, not even being an automaton exposes you to working overtime.  A different automated voice scurries on to say, "Please call back during normal working hours." 

Which apparently will be another grim experience I'm not looking forward to.  On a website called Customer Service Scoreboard, Chicago Tribune customer service is ranked 425 out of 525 companies, qualifying it for the official designation "Terrible".  Comments posted:147 negative, 1 positive.

The negative replies get a canned response titled "Official company reply".  Which doesn't exactly raise your expectations, for good reason . . . 

Good afternoon, my name is Autumn Smith, and I am an employee in the Client Services dept at the Chicago Tribune.

Although our main call center is in the Phillippines . . .

What follows is a series of a graphic customer descriptions of what you have in store for you when you talk to one of those hapless folk at outsource central in Manila, whose English is reportedly somewhat tentative and who will apparently try to bargain with you if you say you want to cancel, and commit only to "taking your request", which may or may not actually be honored without a second or third follow-up, and possibly the sacrifice of your first born male child.

I was brought up at the end of the golden age of newspapers.  As a kid, I read all three of Chicago's dailies (somehow, Chicago Today, the aereated aftertaste of Hearst's old Herald American, never struck me as a real newspaper.) I couldn't even wait til the day of publication. Late every afternoon, I would walk to the corner newsstand to pick up the "Bulldog" edition of the Trib and Sun-Times, already carrying the next day's date.

Even today, I don't subscribe to the Sunday Trib.  I don't buy the Sun-Times on Sunday.  I can't wait.  I buy them as soon as they hit the newsstands Saturday morning, the same way that even though I
I've read every edition in the history of Crain's Chicago Business, I've never subscribed, because I can't wait until Monday or Tuesday for a paper I can buy Saturday afternoon. Which I do, along with the Sunday New York Times, pretty much every week, at one of Chicago's last surviving newsstands, at Chicago and Michigan.  Call me sentimental.

So now we get to watch the death throes of the very idea of a vibrant city newspaper, as the last survivors flail on their way to the graveyard.

Like pretty much every daily, the Trib killed off their book section years ago, shifting it to an anemic handful of pages in its Saturday edition, when a lower readership means not having to print quite as many copies of pages hardly anyone reads.  Now, the Trib's killing off even that, creating a Printers Row book section to be sold as a separate publication at $99.00 a year, about what I pay per year for the New Yorker and New York Review of Books combined.  The Reader's Michael Miner had a great piece on Thursday on a single Tribune article all but completey devoid of any curiousity as to the basic facts of the story being reported.

Removing content and doubling prices.  Making customer service an obstacle course. It's as if the sales staff at the Trib are all graduates of the class, "Marketing for the Suicidal."

It wasn't that long ago that publishing a city's dominant newspaper was thought of as a license to print money.  Now it's the way to burn through it.  It's the classic tale of challenges ignored as engorged margins became an addiction, of cluelessness, arrogance and desperation racing each other down a quickening whirlpool of dissolution.

You could get angry, but it doesn't seem worth the bother.  There's nothing you can do about death. It's just sad.

Time to move on.

 Why does the above shot remind me of the chamber pot scene in Visconti's The Leopard?