Has Corruption in Chicago or Illinois cost you or your firm money? time? your sanity? ;-)
I spent a long day at City Hall, like 6 am until 4:15 pm, getting through zoning (which went well) and trying to figure out how someone recently got 2 permits on a project when they have it locked down so no one can get a permit until the stuff I am dealing with is resolved. Maybe it's incompetence, I don't know. Or something's going down? Again, I don't know.
There were several times last year when I showed up at zoning and was 4th in line and wasn't seen until noon. 20 or more people went in front of me. (They weren't homeowners and my stuff wasn't complex.) It was very odd. Then when I questioned it, they played dumb and were angry that I dare question them. This spring some guys were arrested for selling places in line.
The local media doesn't talk about this stuff...
It's very sensitive and I understand that people might not want to comment but it's very real and affects our bottom lines. After watching Patrick Fitzgerald talk about Blago and Fitzgerald's deputy say that Illinois was one of the most corrupt states in the nation, I wanted to bring this up.
The expediters have the place on lock down. Theres a culture of clout that dominates in addition to a bureaucracy gone mad. Layers upon layers of review and documentation for little more than make work for unionized desk clerks. But the best part is, as we routinely do, inspectors dont actually do much inspecting if the paperwork is in order so we routinely change things knowing the union hacks they send out into the field just want to get to lunch and wont look. Almost all the inspectors are local union tradesmen who push methods that benefit labor intensive assemblies for the good of the hours worked by their respective trades regardless of proven performance of alternate assemblies.
But back to the expediters - I bet not a lot of people know that one of the main people at Burnham expediting is the son of a know outfit connected union organizer from the 50's and 60's.
Everyone thinks this is a big joke here, they find it funny. But when organized crime and corrupt unions drive away 75% of your industry in just 25 years, and businesses flee your state because they are taxed and extorted, necessity to change eventually wins, as hopefully was proven today.
I actually think Blago may get off on this one. Being on tape saying you will take a bribe is not the same as taking a bribe. Its twisted - the fix may be that they stopped him before he could do real damage to the machine, obama and the senate seat.
I don't think Obama had anything to do with it. The second guy arrested work in 3 different positions for Daley. I don't think Obama's a saint but when he called Emil Jones and got that ethics bill passed 55-0 on September 22nd. Blago opposed it. It goes into effect Jan 1 and that's why Blago was looking for campaign donations. Blago called Obama an expletive. Blago wanted to be president and Obama blew right by him. They were never friends.
Obama is saving his political capital and we'll see what reforms can be made to health care and our decrepit infrastructure system. We'll see but this John Kass stuff about how he's Daley in blackface is wishful thinking. Kass is not a very imaginative guy. Fixing Chicago is a life's work. Obama has bigger aspirations and left. It'll be Fioretti or Waguespeck.
And old boss told a story about trying to get a permit in Chicago when he was a young architect. Someone at City Hall whispered to him that his client needed to make a "donation" to Mayor Daley's re-election campaign and the permit would be ready months sooner. Of course the corporate client wasn't going to make bribes and the permit got held up. Eventually the client just scrapped the project and built out in the 'burbs.
Evil, you're right that saying you'll take a bribe isn't the same as dong it, but they're after him for conspiracy, not actually taking bribes. A lesser crime, but a crime none the less.
One of my old firms went after a major project being built by Cook County, and apparently all but one of the county board members voted for our firm. But Stroger, and Stroger alone, voted for the other firm, and the other firm got the commission. We ended up having to lay off some people as a result.
Chicago is a great city, but it's never going to live up to its potential as long as it keeps behaving like some third-world banana republic dictatorship.
I believe what is illegal specifically with the governor on this issue is not whether or not he took a bribe. If someone had approached him with a bribe and he was considering taking it, but had not yet, I think he may have been able to get off. But I believe he was soliciting a bribe, that he was the one initiating the process, and in that case I believe you do not need to have completed the process for it to be illegal.
re: Obama. My hunch is that he is not corrupt in the least, but maybe too quick to throw people into the fire who might even be seen as corrupt or having blemishes just to avoid getting caught up in something.
I never said Obama was corrupt but its true he ran with a circle of sleazy Chicago politicians - you cant not run with that circle - but I think Fitz did Blago a big favor by arresting him before he could do real damage. Rumor is candidate 5 is Emil Jones, Obama's mentor. That would create a feeding frenzy on the news channels and incite hillbillys everywhere to riot.
it seems #5 is Jesse Jackson Jr. or Emil Jones, with i believe, Emil the more likely... unfortunately for obama, the clues Blago gave about who #5 is much more readily fit a man like Jones than a relative new comer like Jr. Emil and Blago have a much better relationship than JJ Jr., and Emil is said to have significant cash from his house races still available, and a much more powerful list of possible donors.
to respond to your original question, yes, just recently, the city (landscape, specifically) held up a project and cost our client money, and me extra time.
the project is a restaurant/bar that we are building out in an existing building (we are doing structural work, so no self-cert). they came to us with permit review comments for adding a new parkway tree adjacent to the building on the street, and our client decided to then add an extra tree to help do some "masking" of a property across the street. then, we went in for the open-plan review to address the comments, got through that fine. then, it went back to zoning and landscape, and landscape is making us fill in curb-cuts that have nothing to do with the project. fine, we take care of it. then, they come AGAIN with another comment to add yet ANOTHER tree to the other street facade the building runs along. we went in for permit at the end of september, and we are still dealing with landscape coming back to us with random comments repeatedly and holding things up. we have gone in to them 3 times now, and they keep telling us different things. it is pretty fantastic, in a sad and funny way. luckily, our client is understanding of all the shit he has to put up with just to do business in chicago (not that it makes it okay or right).
how a city the size and scope of chicago continues to have this amount of corruption is beyond me.
new york and new jersey cleaned out the mob, why can't chi-town get rid of this bullshit? it almost hard to believe that a politician from there could wind up president. roll around with dogs and wake up with fleas and what-not.
everyone i have ever known from chicago calls it like it is: ridonkulous.
uh - NYC is still the most mobbed up town anywhere, including Chicago. My friends in the restaraunt biz there tell me horror stories of shakedowns from garbage collection, city inspectors and food purveyors gone crazy - even delivering their orders to other places and then telling them so what, pay it anyways. Chicago is much more tame than that. Besides - NYChas wall street, and you cant find a more corrupt, sinister cabal than that.
I clipped the following from the Chicagoclout website, because it summarizes the situation better than I ever could:
From Nov '07 post:
Patrick McDonough stumbled on tens of millions of taxpayer waste (at least $40,000,000) just by seeing private drivers sleep in their trucks. Gang bangers get good paying jobs who take bribes from outfit trucking companies who do no work.
Maybe ask Patrick McDonough where to find waste.
Ralph Fero found $60,000,000 in waste with the vortex Rain Blocker program with thousands of the devices being thrown out behind the Department of Water Managment (and many times they did not work as they were supposed to)
Falph Fero with Chicago Magazine did an analysis of the top heavy management (with 3 to 10 managers supervising 1 worker sometimes) and very large salaries of family members and politically connected people with no credentials. Even Alderman Bernard Stone did a study and spoke out on the number of over $100,000 city employees.
If Ralph Fero can find $60,000,000 in waste with the rain blockers and see the obvious top heavy and overpaid political commissioners, deputy commissioners and do nothing political workers--what about a study, a efficiency expert with an education, the US Attorneys etc.
Just read the Sun Times and the Tim Novak now regular series on political waste and corruption.
Some ways to cut (from big to small)
1. Why does Alderman Burke need 4 bodyguards and a city car and a driver? He sometimes has more police officers all assigned to him? WHY?--is he going to be assasinated?
ALSO--he is very wealthy why doesn't he hire bodyguards instead of us paying for them.
2. Why did Mayor Daley's mother (and daughtes and son)(and God rest Sis's great soul and a great lady) need a bodyguard???
Again, the Daley's are wealthy let John Daley's insurance company (which insured all the hired trucks) pay for a bodyguard or international investment and finance "guru" Williama Daley.
The taxpayers should not have to pay extra protection for alderman,
unkown and no threats to all family members.
YES, some of these jobs are hard and people in the public light can be attacked or kidnapped BUT nobody knows what Daley's daughters look like. Alderman Burke sometimes has four or more police officers and a driver and city car (and picks up friends and does social things with his city car and driver)
3. Cut the top heavy management, the deputy commissioners. Just ask Daley ally alderman Stone.
4. Cut the HDO drug dealers and thugs, cut the 11th ward ghost payrollers, cut the 19th ward do nothings.
The Operating Engineers salaries are too high.
There are whole sections of people doing nothing or Whirity swiping in and out or Strodin building a house on city time.
5. Chicago has much higher law suits by city workers and much higher workmens compensation claims than anywhere else in Illinois including coal miners.
You have to change the culture.
You have to get good lawyers and not political hacks like Mara Georges who is there to get contracts for Shefsky.
6. Cut Intergovernmental affairs, which even the alderman joke are the notebooks with their spying and writing notes on everyone.
7. Cut Maggie Daley's subsidized art program let her friend Ryan and Aon fund it and not taxpayers--not saying it might not do some good but my mom might have a great idea to help kids and I don't get taxpayer funding.
8. TIFS--just read Ben Joravsky or County Commissioner Mike Quigley.
9. The Inspector General's office under Vrstrouias was a corrupt joke. His salary was a waste. How many stupid investigations wasted money on silly stuff or protecting big corruption and waste.
Vrstourias now works in the States Attorney's office.
10. The Burge legal defense when everyone knows he is guilty and they settled or are going to settle cases that everyone knew would be settled over $20,000,000.
11. The Jeremiah Joyce Airport contracts.
12. The loss in the city revenue from selling land undervalue and buying it back for insane profits from Tom DiPiazza, Tim Degnan, Jerry Joyce, Oscar Dangelo, Michael Marchese.
13. Grants to Churches (Separation of Church and state) and no interest loans over 30 years ffor 5 million. The Reader just did a story on the blaspehemer "Rev" Lucius Hall who corrupted the "Our Father/Lord's Prayer" saying "give us our Daley, Daley, Daley bread" in exchange for corruption of the Black clergy and selling out his own people Rev. Lucius Hall has received 3,500,000 in grants.
City Commissioners used to shake down contractors and employees for Old Saint Patricks Church and government has given them a lot of breaks.
14. Alderman Stone had a good idea to sell the vacant lots the city owns or sell idle city property.
15. Every alderman should have a program to turn vacant lots into productive tax earning land.
16. Cut the stupid city council committees that do nothing and provide ghost payrollers and job spots for political people. One hack they call the hallwalker has no education and makes over $100,000 with no skills or training in his supposed field.
17. Cut the number of alderman from 50 to 25 or 20 or even 10.
18. Implement Term Limits
2 6 year terms for Mayor
3 4 year terms for Alderman
The money and power is calcifying in the wrong places.
19. Consolidate the Treasurer and Clerk into 1 appointed post. Why have elections on what de facto amounts to an appointment by the Mayor.
20. Really eliminate patronage and thus eliminate the need for the millions wasted on the stupid Federal Monitor.
21. Act right so you don't have Sorich/Slattery indictments and federal monitors and stupid Shakman settlements where Michael Shakman will make 4,000,0000 in attorneys fees.
22. The no bid and overbilling legal contracts that Mara Georges gives out to her mentor Brian Crowe at Shefsky or Freeborn Peters or other silly political connected overbilling law firms.
23. Victor Reyes, just his family members on the city payroll, let alone the money he makes from no bid contracts on redisticting (Cost taxpayers 1,300,000) or his sisters company Aztec or pass through bs minority contacts.
Let alone what Victor Reyes has cost in legal bills for investigations and law suits or all the criminal idiots who he put on the payroll (he probably put 1000 employees on the city payroll including his entire fat family)
24. The whole property tax assessment and appeals which is for the politically connected
Speaker Madigan got a 2,000,000 fee for his law firm when he saved a big airline $6,000,000 that could of gone to taxpayers
Hynes, Houlihan and company make a lot of money from the current Byzantine tax system which does not work and favors politics
Both commercial and homeowners are over taxed
25. The Duffs at $50,000,000 of phony minority contracts for cleaning and other services that could of been done better and cheaper
26. Grants to churches and non for profits that are political payback
Eliminate politically connected art programs
Eliminate the Inspector Generals office
Eliminate 20 or 30 alderman
Eliminate City Council committees
Make a 10 or 20% across the board cut
27. The Joyce cousins made a HALF A BILLION 500,000,000 of profit on the Cable buyout which was a joke
28. Daley's wife's friends and Oscar Da'Angelo made money on concessions at O'Hare
as did Tim Degnan with McDonalds
29. The towing scandal
30. The City of Chicago could probably fire at least 2000 political hack do nothing ghost payrollers
ep - historically maybe, but not if you read the papers these days. i'd agree though that if you include wall street than NYC takes it in, well, a new york minute.
mind you, this isn't a knock on the great and fair city of chicago. but its reputation for political corruption is bar none.
maybe the mob connection in NYC is a bad comparison, because i was commenting more on the rank and file corruption (or apparent corruption) of every facet of the political machine.
big deal some restaurants don't get their shipments in NYC - who can afford to eat at restaurants anyways?!?
In the '80s part of my job responsibilities entailed a monthly report noting in detail dollar amounts of construction material supplies purchased from a company owned by Tim Degnan (Mayor Daley's former Intergovernmental Affairs and/or Chief of Staff person in 1980s) by the general contractor for a downtown high-rise. Line-by-line, trade-by-trade, to see how we could increase our monthly expediture, for a report submitted beyond our firm.
The degree of corruption in Chicago is truly astounding. Here's the article taken off the Better Government web-site about Degnan's company, obliquely referring to "large purchases strong-armed out of companies":
Combine will roll a winner, eventually
Published May 30, 2007
by: John Kass
In Hapless Taxpayer World, where you and I live, here's what happens if you gamble at the casinos and lose your house:
Your wife leaves and takes the kids. And you end up alone in a motel, shrieking at the TV, eating microwave mac-and-cheese with a spork.
But if you live in Combine World, with the state's political insiders, here's what happens if you gamble and lose more than you can afford:
State Senate President Emil Jones (D-Chicago) tries to bail you out with a nifty idea buried deep in a gambling bill, allowing you to recoup a combined $33 million in casino investment losses from the once-sure-thing (and since failed) Emerald Casino in allegedly non-Outfit-controlled Rosemont.
And after you get all of your money back, Jones will put you first in line to invest in new casino deals, in Chicago, Waukegan, the south suburbs or O'Hare International Airport. You'll make a fortune.
But what happens to the rest of us, in Hapless Taxpayer World? We can press our noses up against the window, watching politically connected investors raise champagne flutes, toasting to the benefits of being "disadvantaged minority" casino investors in Illinois.
"This whole saga is astounding," Jay Stewart, executive director of the Better Government Association, told me on Tuesday. "You've been writing about this for years, and they keep on trying. If you or I invest in a business and lose, we cry in our beer. But in this case, the privileged insiders say, 'We made a bad investment, now reward us, and, while you're at it, give us a new casino.' "
This is not a joke. This is Illinois. There have been attempts at giving the so-called disadvantaged minority Emerald insiders their money back over the years. And each time I've written about it, I foolishly forget to burn the stumps with a torch, to keep the heads from sprouting and multiplying.
Late Tuesday, Cindy Davidsmeyer, a spokeswoman for Jones, called me to say the Emerald investor bailout had been withdrawn.
And I wondered: Who was going to break the news to mayoral brain Tim Degnan?
One of the investors is Connie Payton, wife of the late, legendary Walter Payton. She lost out in the Emerald deal. I do feel sorry for her. But if I die and my wife makes bad investments, will the Illinois Combine bail her out? I think not.
Another investor is Chaz Ebert, wife of the renowned Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert. I wanted to feel sorry for her too. Then one day, after one of my columns ran on another bailout attempt, she called to complain about my tone, while she was en route to the French Riviera.
Yet Payton and Ebert and others are the window dressing, perhaps unwitting cover for what's really going on here, an effort by the political class to take care of another investor, who is usually mentioned last, if at all:
Sandra Degnan, who's married to Tim Degnan.
That was what the Jones bailout was all about. And that's what it's been about all the other times: Illinois politicians trying to give the Degnan family back their money. With so much federal heat on City Hall these days, making Tim Degnan happy is important. He is not merely an adviser, he's so close to the mayor that he is considered the fifth Daley brother.
It's not as if the Degnan family is eating government cheese. A furniture company with Degnan family connections has sold millions upon millions of dollars worth of office furniture to government clients, including the cash-strapped CTA. And Tim Degnan had enough cash to purchase land on the edge of the footprint of the proposed Peotone Airport. After departing City Hall -- where he left convicted underling Robert Sorich in charge of continuing to build massive patronage armies -- he got into the construction material supply business.
Jeepers. You think any contractors getting city or state public works deals would ever purchase their building supplies from Degnan?
If Tim Degnan needs cash, he could ask his friends, like 11th Ward mayoral real estate developer Tommy DiPiazza, of Bridgeport Village fame; or Freddie "Palm Beach" Barbara, the Bridgeport trucking boss, waste-management consultant and mayoral fashionista.
Still, Tim Degnan has always been decent to me, and I've admired the fact that he was a loyal strategist who spent decades in politics, wiping the runny noses of younger 11th Ward politicians, before leaving City Hall to go into business and make money for his family.
But even if you wanted to invest in the Emerald Casino deal in Rosemont when it was a sure thing -- long before it imploded with charges of Outfit connections of other investors and contractors -- you wouldn't have been invited.
You wouldn't even have known about it. It was a mystery, an inside play. A question reporters might want to ask Daley is, "Mayor do you support Sandra Degnan and other Emerald 'disadvantaged minority' investors getting a piece of another casino?"
So Jones wisely pulled back at the end of the day. But the fact that politicians even had the gall to propose such a thing makes it a cloudy day for those of us in Hapless Taxpayer World. Political wise men insist the bailout won't happen this year, but I wonder.
When it comes to gambling, would you bet your house against the Combine?
I am sitting right now in the 9th floor and I found out something very interesting. On October 1st they changed over to an online registration system. Previously you faxed in a form and they you waited for an appointment. It took them a week or more to get back to me. Then the appointments always seemed to be 5 weeks out. So that's 6 weeks. But some expediters seemed to get appointments right away.
And now? This place still seems really busy by the volume of stuff going through zoning but the long waits are gone.
The CW? Someone making the appointments was playing favorites. Hard to believe? ;-)
Not really!!!
Kudos to the new process and they need to get the rest of the older crew of PMs out of here and make way for new blood.
The office that I work for now got an expeditor about a year ago because the reasons stated above, time...money...less frustration, ect. I would strongly suggest an expeditor. What is interesting about these people is that City Hall becomes their office away from their office. They are also able to efficiently get approvals pushed through zoning. If you would like to know who we work with, shoot me an e-mail and I will talk to my supervisors about it.
TRIBUNE ANALYSIS: Market collapse is aggravated by system where aldermen benefit from campaign donations from developers
By Dan Mihalopoulos, Robert Becker and Todd Lighty
Tribune reporters
December 31, 2008
Like so many Chicagoans, Walter and Alice Sopala didn't like how their alderman let a real estate developer build a new condo building that placed their home in its shadows.
And they really don't like it now that the developer—a donor to the alderman's political fund—has abandoned his three-unit project.
"They've boarded up the windows and the doors," said Alice Sopala of the building in the 2900 block of North Sacramento Avenue. "Someone even broke in and stole something, like a jacuzzi. It looks pathetic."
Neighborhoods that recently bustled with teardowns and new construction are now filled with many such unsold homes, testament to a collapsed housing boom with a unique Chicago flavor: Much of the development was fueled by campaign donations to aldermen whose power trumped citywide planning.
The clout underlying the building frenzy was documented in the Tribune's yearlong "Neighborhoods for Sale" investigation, which included an analysis of more than 5,700 zoning changes approved by the City Council since the late 1990s.
"These guys ramrodded thousands of new units with these zoning changes for their campaign donors, and now those units are swamping the market," said Craig Norris, who heads the preservation and development committee of a community group in Wicker Park.
"Everybody who owns a house or condo is being affected by this," Norris added. "Sure, the banks and their easy credit had a lot to do with [the decline in home values], but the aldermen who did these 5,000 zoning changes have a lot of blood on their hands. The city could have planned better and limited the overdevelopment."
Mayor Richard Daley has maintained the tradition of letting aldermen have the final say over what gets built in their wards. Almost half of the zoning changes approved by the council members are done despite opposition from City Hall's own planning staff.
In case after case, aldermen ignored neighbors' complaints as well as planners' warnings that proposed projects would be too dense or would not be consistent with the character of the neighborhoods.
On Harlem Avenue in the 36th Ward, a developer who has given the alderman $3,000 used a zoning change to put up a five-story condo complex despite objections from neighbors. Now the builder is trying to entice potential buyers by offering a year without condo association assessments.
Nowhere has the correlation between clout and development been more obvious than the 32nd Ward, which saw more zoning changes than any of the city's 50 wards in the last decade.
Former 32nd Ward Ald. Ted Matlak used his zoning authority to allow new and bigger homes on scores of lots before his re-election defeat last year, pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from real estate interests who benefited from his development decisions.
Many of the new homes that he made possible in the Bucktown and Wicker Park neighborhoods have languished on the market for months and even years.
For-sale ads were placed by the politically connected developers who built the mansion neighbors dubbed the "French Embassy" in the 1800 block of North Wood Street and another multimillion dollar residence that replaced the once-popular Artful Dodger bar. But the builders of both houses found no buyers.
One new, $2.85 million house still for sale on Hermitage Avenue was first listed more than three years ago. The builder had given the alderman $1,500 after obtaining the necessary zoning change.
The lawyer who represented the builders seeking the zoning changes for all three of those 32nd Ward mansions was James J. Banks, the busiest zoning lawyer in Chicago and nephew of council Zoning Committee Chairman William J.P. Banks (36th). Even as the building boom faded this year, James Banks has continued to win aldermanic backing for dozens of new proposals."A lot of those decisions to up-zone have led to a glut of condos out there, and the market has dried up for those massive single-family homes," said Ald. Scott Waguespack, who narrowly unseated Matlak last year.
Waguespack, who blasted his predecessor for being too cozy with developers, recently blocked a 45-unit residential proposal in Bucktown. The rookie alderman cited public opinion for that and other anti-development decisions, but he seems to be making few friends in the real estate industry.
After Waguespack reversed a 2006 zoning change that would have allowed a retail and office project on Chicago Avenue, that project's developers sued the city in Cook County Circuit Court. The developers, who gave $5,000 to Matlak shortly before his re-election defeat, allege that Waguespack's reversal of their up-zoning reduced the value of the property by hundreds of thousands.
Daley has shrugged off concerns about how the development process works in the city. But federal authorities have shown an interest.
A federal probe that dates to at least 2007 has expanded to include interest in a 2004 letter to Daley from U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Chicago). Gutierrez lobbied the mayor on behalf of a zoning change for a developer who lent him $200,000 for a separate real estate deal. The congressman said he did nothing improper.
As part of the investigation, authorities have subpoenaed a broad range of city documents concerning the Galewood Yards residential project on the West Side, according to records obtained recently by the Tribune. An October 2007 subpoena to City Hall seeks all zoning records, building permits and Galewood Yards-related correspondence from Ald. Isaac Carothers, a mayoral ally whose 29th Ward includes the newly built project. Carothers has declined to comment.
Meanwhile, the housing collapse has left residents and developers hanging. The Sopalas feared their Logan Square home would be swallowed by a "condo canyon" after developer Cornel Moldoveanu built his project next door and won approval for a similar building on the other side of their home.
Failing to sell the three condos on Sacramento, Moldoveanu said Tuesday he is resigned to seeing the property seized by his creditors. The project's masonry contractor, hardwood floor installers and architect claimed they did not get paid for their work, county records show.
"It's gone," Moldoveanu said. "I didn't have enough money to finish it."
In an interview in November 2007, the developer said he had wanted permission from the alderman to build an even larger project on the site and rebutted the notion his new building would be out of scale with its surroundings.
"Everybody does that all over the city," he said. "Even bigger."
While the above referenced aldermanic gaming of the system is definitely a problem, the city zoning & P&D departments are just as big a problem if not bigger.
The very, very poorly written zoning code and absurdly despotic zoning administrators have, yes, cost my firm and my clients a lot of unnecessary time and money. I'm got in a grey-area nightmare at the moment, in fact, and we are already being forced to discount our fee because of it. It is very rare that a project makes it through zoning and code check (not to mention landscape, driveway, and parking) without forcing us to jump through absurdly time-consuming hoops, none of which address any real issues that zoning / code check SHOULD be checking for, and all of which are fabricated out of the gaps in code books in order to protect the jobs of the people with their asses parked in the seat across from you at the department. Asinine. No department talks to any other department, papers get lost constantly, the poorly written books allow for each different guy to make up whatever he wants and none of it jives with what anybody else says or what you yourself, in concert with your zoning attorney, figured it would be. This is the fourth city I have worked in and by FAR the most poorly run zoning and building departments.
If it makes you feel any better I know a tax cheat who routinely gets zoning changes granted through relatives with the city. While we bust our ass and play by the rules, "they" cheat taxes, get favorable zoning and make little fortunes.
Luckily they all almost always eventually get caught.
Today was classic. I am working on a house renovation for a trader. It's a kitchen that turned into 2nd floor addition over the and then a gut and now he wants 8 foot ceilings in the basement. We needed a zoning "administrative adjustment" for the addition because it was 2 feet in the setback and it was over the existing 1 story part of the house. It took 5 weeks to get the paperwork back and another 4 weeks to finish our meeting with them.
So now we're digging out the basement within the footprint of the house and the dude at zoning wants the same variation! WTF!
I challenged him. Oh this should have been done at the same time. I told him that we gutted the kitchen in the first permit and since we were inside the house, that it should have required the same. He said that the neighbors should "be notified" that we are digging down. Under the terms of the adjustment, the neighbors on either side need to agree (usually) to get it passed the Alderman.
Zoning is about light and air. How is digging down going to change that? It doesn't change the square footage or anything else.
So a $250 check to the City and another couple of months!!!
Be glad he didn't call the board of underground...
Lesson learned - any piecemeal renovation project needing special approval (zoning variance, Underground) goes on one permit, the other work goes on a second one. That way, while you are attending aldermanic fund-raisers, the hum-drum work (interior renovations, electrical, etc) can go on unimpeded. Get the straightforward one first, put permit in the window. Be courteous to your inspector.
At the beginning it looks like it costs more (due to permit fees) but in the long run its cheaper (labor sitting on their bums).
I know it won't make you feel any better, but since my first story from above we have had more run-ins with landscape and zoning, and have today just received the permit for the interior build-out. We are going to have to get a zoning exception (really a variance) in order to get the outdoor patio through, but now they can at least finish up the interior work while the exterior cafe area gets through the ZBA.
As for notifying the neighbors, that has to happen anyway for an administrative adjustment. The owner has to send (via certified mail) a letter to adjacent properties letting them know what is going on and for their approval. The only way I can imagine them wanting you to notify the neighbors for digging down is for shoring so there are no soil collapses (and only if you are within a certain distance of the property line).
Speaking of the board of underground, one of our larger commercial projects was hung up in OUC for over a year. That is not an exaggeration. Luckily, the only way you have to go to OUC is if you go more than 12'-0" below grade, so almost all residential projects don't have to deal with that crap.
As one of 15 members of the unpaid city advisory board, Ariola supported the mayor's plan to spend more than $13.5 million to build a $25.2 million homeless shelter for the Chicago Christian Industrial League -- a charity that had sold its longtime home in Greektown to Daley's friend Michael Marchese for a luxury condo development.
Ariola's Chicago Realty Co. was later hired by the league to oversee construction of the homeless shelter -- a project that has left the league in financial trouble, unable to pay a $10.8 million loan it got to finish the project.
The charity paid Ariola $301,700. At least a third of that came from city TIF money -- the funding Ariola's commission approves -- city records show. Ariola has served on the city board since 2001.
There's a blog post in response that sounds like someone from our boards:
This is not corruption, this is taking care of your friends. You don't go to the University of Illinois and Northwestern to end up like a regular schmuck. I think that Mr.Ariola is a fine kind of man for helping the City out with this project for homeless people. By getting such a big contract for himself, he can be certain that he won't end up homeless.I can tell the City really looks for experienced people to oversee projects. I am sure his resume had plenty of references with all the work his company did in two months.I think I will volunteer for the homeless Bankers committee and when they need someone to give counseling services to all the financially distressed bankers, I can get the contract through my Pathological Liars and Corrupt Politicians Company I will start up today.
I keep hearing from contractors that the city is over a year late on payments - would that be concidered corruption? Letting your vendors die on the vine?
Actual Text from the House version of the stimulus bill. Sad indeed your state has to be singled out.
1 SEC. 1112. ADDITIONAL ASSURANCE OF APPROPRIATE USE
2 OF FUNDS.
3 None of the funds provided by this Act may be made
4 available to the State of Illinois, or any agency of the
5 State, unless (1) the use of such funds by the State is
6 approved in legislation enacted by the State after the date
7 of the enactment of this Act, or (2) Rod R. Blagojevich
8 no longer holds the office of Governor of the State of Illi9
nois. The preceding sentence shall not apply to any funds
10 provided directly to a unit of local government (1) by a
11 Federal department or agency, or (2) by an established
12 formula from the State.
Tomorrow night the Young Architect's Forum of the AIA is having an event at the Irish Bar in Helmut Jahn's building.
First Tuesdays Happy Hour
Tuesday, February 3, 5:30 pm- 8:00 pm
Everyone is welcome at our monthly gathering in our new location.
This event is sponsored by Young Architects Forum
Learning units: Not Available
Location: Emerald Loop, 216 N. Wabash Ave. (also 35 E. Wacker Dr.)
Member price: 0 Non-member price: 0
Has Corruption in Chicago or Illinois cost you or your firm money? time? your sanity?
Has Corruption in Chicago or Illinois cost you or your firm money? time? your sanity? ;-)
I spent a long day at City Hall, like 6 am until 4:15 pm, getting through zoning (which went well) and trying to figure out how someone recently got 2 permits on a project when they have it locked down so no one can get a permit until the stuff I am dealing with is resolved. Maybe it's incompetence, I don't know. Or something's going down? Again, I don't know.
There were several times last year when I showed up at zoning and was 4th in line and wasn't seen until noon. 20 or more people went in front of me. (They weren't homeowners and my stuff wasn't complex.) It was very odd. Then when I questioned it, they played dumb and were angry that I dare question them. This spring some guys were arrested for selling places in line.
The local media doesn't talk about this stuff...
It's very sensitive and I understand that people might not want to comment but it's very real and affects our bottom lines. After watching Patrick Fitzgerald talk about Blago and Fitzgerald's deputy say that Illinois was one of the most corrupt states in the nation, I wanted to bring this up.
The expediters have the place on lock down. Theres a culture of clout that dominates in addition to a bureaucracy gone mad. Layers upon layers of review and documentation for little more than make work for unionized desk clerks. But the best part is, as we routinely do, inspectors dont actually do much inspecting if the paperwork is in order so we routinely change things knowing the union hacks they send out into the field just want to get to lunch and wont look. Almost all the inspectors are local union tradesmen who push methods that benefit labor intensive assemblies for the good of the hours worked by their respective trades regardless of proven performance of alternate assemblies.
But back to the expediters - I bet not a lot of people know that one of the main people at Burnham expediting is the son of a know outfit connected union organizer from the 50's and 60's.
Everyone thinks this is a big joke here, they find it funny. But when organized crime and corrupt unions drive away 75% of your industry in just 25 years, and businesses flee your state because they are taxed and extorted, necessity to change eventually wins, as hopefully was proven today.
I actually think Blago may get off on this one. Being on tape saying you will take a bribe is not the same as taking a bribe. Its twisted - the fix may be that they stopped him before he could do real damage to the machine, obama and the senate seat.
Evil,
I don't think Obama had anything to do with it. The second guy arrested work in 3 different positions for Daley. I don't think Obama's a saint but when he called Emil Jones and got that ethics bill passed 55-0 on September 22nd. Blago opposed it. It goes into effect Jan 1 and that's why Blago was looking for campaign donations. Blago called Obama an expletive. Blago wanted to be president and Obama blew right by him. They were never friends.
Obama is saving his political capital and we'll see what reforms can be made to health care and our decrepit infrastructure system. We'll see but this John Kass stuff about how he's Daley in blackface is wishful thinking. Kass is not a very imaginative guy. Fixing Chicago is a life's work. Obama has bigger aspirations and left. It'll be Fioretti or Waguespeck.
Back to the 9th floor...
And old boss told a story about trying to get a permit in Chicago when he was a young architect. Someone at City Hall whispered to him that his client needed to make a "donation" to Mayor Daley's re-election campaign and the permit would be ready months sooner. Of course the corporate client wasn't going to make bribes and the permit got held up. Eventually the client just scrapped the project and built out in the 'burbs.
Evil, you're right that saying you'll take a bribe isn't the same as dong it, but they're after him for conspiracy, not actually taking bribes. A lesser crime, but a crime none the less.
One of my old firms went after a major project being built by Cook County, and apparently all but one of the county board members voted for our firm. But Stroger, and Stroger alone, voted for the other firm, and the other firm got the commission. We ended up having to lay off some people as a result.
Chicago is a great city, but it's never going to live up to its potential as long as it keeps behaving like some third-world banana republic dictatorship.
I believe what is illegal specifically with the governor on this issue is not whether or not he took a bribe. If someone had approached him with a bribe and he was considering taking it, but had not yet, I think he may have been able to get off. But I believe he was soliciting a bribe, that he was the one initiating the process, and in that case I believe you do not need to have completed the process for it to be illegal.
re: Obama. My hunch is that he is not corrupt in the least, but maybe too quick to throw people into the fire who might even be seen as corrupt or having blemishes just to avoid getting caught up in something.
I never said Obama was corrupt but its true he ran with a circle of sleazy Chicago politicians - you cant not run with that circle - but I think Fitz did Blago a big favor by arresting him before he could do real damage. Rumor is candidate 5 is Emil Jones, Obama's mentor. That would create a feeding frenzy on the news channels and incite hillbillys everywhere to riot.
I've read elsewhere at #5 is likely to be Jesse Jackson Jr.
#1 was probably Valarie Jarrett, who is relatively clean and who was rumored to be Obama's pick.
it seems #5 is Jesse Jackson Jr. or Emil Jones, with i believe, Emil the more likely... unfortunately for obama, the clues Blago gave about who #5 is much more readily fit a man like Jones than a relative new comer like Jr. Emil and Blago have a much better relationship than JJ Jr., and Emil is said to have significant cash from his house races still available, and a much more powerful list of possible donors.
make,
to respond to your original question, yes, just recently, the city (landscape, specifically) held up a project and cost our client money, and me extra time.
the project is a restaurant/bar that we are building out in an existing building (we are doing structural work, so no self-cert). they came to us with permit review comments for adding a new parkway tree adjacent to the building on the street, and our client decided to then add an extra tree to help do some "masking" of a property across the street. then, we went in for the open-plan review to address the comments, got through that fine. then, it went back to zoning and landscape, and landscape is making us fill in curb-cuts that have nothing to do with the project. fine, we take care of it. then, they come AGAIN with another comment to add yet ANOTHER tree to the other street facade the building runs along. we went in for permit at the end of september, and we are still dealing with landscape coming back to us with random comments repeatedly and holding things up. we have gone in to them 3 times now, and they keep telling us different things. it is pretty fantastic, in a sad and funny way. luckily, our client is understanding of all the shit he has to put up with just to do business in chicago (not that it makes it okay or right).
appearantly it JJJ
#5
Who's wearing a wire on the 9th floor?
;-)
just read that evil... good news for obama
how a city the size and scope of chicago continues to have this amount of corruption is beyond me.
new york and new jersey cleaned out the mob, why can't chi-town get rid of this bullshit? it almost hard to believe that a politician from there could wind up president. roll around with dogs and wake up with fleas and what-not.
everyone i have ever known from chicago calls it like it is: ridonkulous.
uh - NYC is still the most mobbed up town anywhere, including Chicago. My friends in the restaraunt biz there tell me horror stories of shakedowns from garbage collection, city inspectors and food purveyors gone crazy - even delivering their orders to other places and then telling them so what, pay it anyways. Chicago is much more tame than that. Besides - NYChas wall street, and you cant find a more corrupt, sinister cabal than that.
I clipped the following from the Chicagoclout website, because it summarizes the situation better than I ever could:
From Nov '07 post:
Patrick McDonough stumbled on tens of millions of taxpayer waste (at least $40,000,000) just by seeing private drivers sleep in their trucks. Gang bangers get good paying jobs who take bribes from outfit trucking companies who do no work.
Maybe ask Patrick McDonough where to find waste.
Ralph Fero found $60,000,000 in waste with the vortex Rain Blocker program with thousands of the devices being thrown out behind the Department of Water Managment (and many times they did not work as they were supposed to)
Falph Fero with Chicago Magazine did an analysis of the top heavy management (with 3 to 10 managers supervising 1 worker sometimes) and very large salaries of family members and politically connected people with no credentials. Even Alderman Bernard Stone did a study and spoke out on the number of over $100,000 city employees.
If Ralph Fero can find $60,000,000 in waste with the rain blockers and see the obvious top heavy and overpaid political commissioners, deputy commissioners and do nothing political workers--what about a study, a efficiency expert with an education, the US Attorneys etc.
Just read the Sun Times and the Tim Novak now regular series on political waste and corruption.
Some ways to cut (from big to small)
1. Why does Alderman Burke need 4 bodyguards and a city car and a driver? He sometimes has more police officers all assigned to him? WHY?--is he going to be assasinated?
ALSO--he is very wealthy why doesn't he hire bodyguards instead of us paying for them.
2. Why did Mayor Daley's mother (and daughtes and son)(and God rest Sis's great soul and a great lady) need a bodyguard???
Again, the Daley's are wealthy let John Daley's insurance company (which insured all the hired trucks) pay for a bodyguard or international investment and finance "guru" Williama Daley.
The taxpayers should not have to pay extra protection for alderman,
unkown and no threats to all family members.
YES, some of these jobs are hard and people in the public light can be attacked or kidnapped BUT nobody knows what Daley's daughters look like. Alderman Burke sometimes has four or more police officers and a driver and city car (and picks up friends and does social things with his city car and driver)
3. Cut the top heavy management, the deputy commissioners. Just ask Daley ally alderman Stone.
4. Cut the HDO drug dealers and thugs, cut the 11th ward ghost payrollers, cut the 19th ward do nothings.
The Operating Engineers salaries are too high.
There are whole sections of people doing nothing or Whirity swiping in and out or Strodin building a house on city time.
5. Chicago has much higher law suits by city workers and much higher workmens compensation claims than anywhere else in Illinois including coal miners.
You have to change the culture.
You have to get good lawyers and not political hacks like Mara Georges who is there to get contracts for Shefsky.
6. Cut Intergovernmental affairs, which even the alderman joke are the notebooks with their spying and writing notes on everyone.
7. Cut Maggie Daley's subsidized art program let her friend Ryan and Aon fund it and not taxpayers--not saying it might not do some good but my mom might have a great idea to help kids and I don't get taxpayer funding.
8. TIFS--just read Ben Joravsky or County Commissioner Mike Quigley.
9. The Inspector General's office under Vrstrouias was a corrupt joke. His salary was a waste. How many stupid investigations wasted money on silly stuff or protecting big corruption and waste.
Vrstourias now works in the States Attorney's office.
10. The Burge legal defense when everyone knows he is guilty and they settled or are going to settle cases that everyone knew would be settled over $20,000,000.
11. The Jeremiah Joyce Airport contracts.
12. The loss in the city revenue from selling land undervalue and buying it back for insane profits from Tom DiPiazza, Tim Degnan, Jerry Joyce, Oscar Dangelo, Michael Marchese.
13. Grants to Churches (Separation of Church and state) and no interest loans over 30 years ffor 5 million. The Reader just did a story on the blaspehemer "Rev" Lucius Hall who corrupted the "Our Father/Lord's Prayer" saying "give us our Daley, Daley, Daley bread" in exchange for corruption of the Black clergy and selling out his own people Rev. Lucius Hall has received 3,500,000 in grants.
City Commissioners used to shake down contractors and employees for Old Saint Patricks Church and government has given them a lot of breaks.
14. Alderman Stone had a good idea to sell the vacant lots the city owns or sell idle city property.
15. Every alderman should have a program to turn vacant lots into productive tax earning land.
16. Cut the stupid city council committees that do nothing and provide ghost payrollers and job spots for political people. One hack they call the hallwalker has no education and makes over $100,000 with no skills or training in his supposed field.
17. Cut the number of alderman from 50 to 25 or 20 or even 10.
18. Implement Term Limits
2 6 year terms for Mayor
3 4 year terms for Alderman
The money and power is calcifying in the wrong places.
19. Consolidate the Treasurer and Clerk into 1 appointed post. Why have elections on what de facto amounts to an appointment by the Mayor.
20. Really eliminate patronage and thus eliminate the need for the millions wasted on the stupid Federal Monitor.
21. Act right so you don't have Sorich/Slattery indictments and federal monitors and stupid Shakman settlements where Michael Shakman will make 4,000,0000 in attorneys fees.
22. The no bid and overbilling legal contracts that Mara Georges gives out to her mentor Brian Crowe at Shefsky or Freeborn Peters or other silly political connected overbilling law firms.
23. Victor Reyes, just his family members on the city payroll, let alone the money he makes from no bid contracts on redisticting (Cost taxpayers 1,300,000) or his sisters company Aztec or pass through bs minority contacts.
Let alone what Victor Reyes has cost in legal bills for investigations and law suits or all the criminal idiots who he put on the payroll (he probably put 1000 employees on the city payroll including his entire fat family)
24. The whole property tax assessment and appeals which is for the politically connected
Speaker Madigan got a 2,000,000 fee for his law firm when he saved a big airline $6,000,000 that could of gone to taxpayers
Hynes, Houlihan and company make a lot of money from the current Byzantine tax system which does not work and favors politics
Both commercial and homeowners are over taxed
25. The Duffs at $50,000,000 of phony minority contracts for cleaning and other services that could of been done better and cheaper
26. Grants to churches and non for profits that are political payback
Eliminate politically connected art programs
Eliminate the Inspector Generals office
Eliminate 20 or 30 alderman
Eliminate City Council committees
Make a 10 or 20% across the board cut
27. The Joyce cousins made a HALF A BILLION 500,000,000 of profit on the Cable buyout which was a joke
28. Daley's wife's friends and Oscar Da'Angelo made money on concessions at O'Hare
as did Tim Degnan with McDonalds
29. The towing scandal
30. The City of Chicago could probably fire at least 2000 political hack do nothing ghost payrollers
We will get to education and pensions later
ep - historically maybe, but not if you read the papers these days. i'd agree though that if you include wall street than NYC takes it in, well, a new york minute.
mind you, this isn't a knock on the great and fair city of chicago. but its reputation for political corruption is bar none.
maybe the mob connection in NYC is a bad comparison, because i was commenting more on the rank and file corruption (or apparent corruption) of every facet of the political machine.
big deal some restaurants don't get their shipments in NYC - who can afford to eat at restaurants anyways?!?
Here's a great website:
http://www.chicagoclout.com/
In the '80s part of my job responsibilities entailed a monthly report noting in detail dollar amounts of construction material supplies purchased from a company owned by Tim Degnan (Mayor Daley's former Intergovernmental Affairs and/or Chief of Staff person in 1980s) by the general contractor for a downtown high-rise. Line-by-line, trade-by-trade, to see how we could increase our monthly expediture, for a report submitted beyond our firm.
The degree of corruption in Chicago is truly astounding. Here's the article taken off the Better Government web-site about Degnan's company, obliquely referring to "large purchases strong-armed out of companies":
Combine will roll a winner, eventually
Published May 30, 2007
by: John Kass
In Hapless Taxpayer World, where you and I live, here's what happens if you gamble at the casinos and lose your house:
Your wife leaves and takes the kids. And you end up alone in a motel, shrieking at the TV, eating microwave mac-and-cheese with a spork.
But if you live in Combine World, with the state's political insiders, here's what happens if you gamble and lose more than you can afford:
State Senate President Emil Jones (D-Chicago) tries to bail you out with a nifty idea buried deep in a gambling bill, allowing you to recoup a combined $33 million in casino investment losses from the once-sure-thing (and since failed) Emerald Casino in allegedly non-Outfit-controlled Rosemont.
And after you get all of your money back, Jones will put you first in line to invest in new casino deals, in Chicago, Waukegan, the south suburbs or O'Hare International Airport. You'll make a fortune.
But what happens to the rest of us, in Hapless Taxpayer World? We can press our noses up against the window, watching politically connected investors raise champagne flutes, toasting to the benefits of being "disadvantaged minority" casino investors in Illinois.
"This whole saga is astounding," Jay Stewart, executive director of the Better Government Association, told me on Tuesday. "You've been writing about this for years, and they keep on trying. If you or I invest in a business and lose, we cry in our beer. But in this case, the privileged insiders say, 'We made a bad investment, now reward us, and, while you're at it, give us a new casino.' "
This is not a joke. This is Illinois. There have been attempts at giving the so-called disadvantaged minority Emerald insiders their money back over the years. And each time I've written about it, I foolishly forget to burn the stumps with a torch, to keep the heads from sprouting and multiplying.
Late Tuesday, Cindy Davidsmeyer, a spokeswoman for Jones, called me to say the Emerald investor bailout had been withdrawn.
And I wondered: Who was going to break the news to mayoral brain Tim Degnan?
One of the investors is Connie Payton, wife of the late, legendary Walter Payton. She lost out in the Emerald deal. I do feel sorry for her. But if I die and my wife makes bad investments, will the Illinois Combine bail her out? I think not.
Another investor is Chaz Ebert, wife of the renowned Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert. I wanted to feel sorry for her too. Then one day, after one of my columns ran on another bailout attempt, she called to complain about my tone, while she was en route to the French Riviera.
Yet Payton and Ebert and others are the window dressing, perhaps unwitting cover for what's really going on here, an effort by the political class to take care of another investor, who is usually mentioned last, if at all:
Sandra Degnan, who's married to Tim Degnan.
That was what the Jones bailout was all about. And that's what it's been about all the other times: Illinois politicians trying to give the Degnan family back their money. With so much federal heat on City Hall these days, making Tim Degnan happy is important. He is not merely an adviser, he's so close to the mayor that he is considered the fifth Daley brother.
It's not as if the Degnan family is eating government cheese. A furniture company with Degnan family connections has sold millions upon millions of dollars worth of office furniture to government clients, including the cash-strapped CTA. And Tim Degnan had enough cash to purchase land on the edge of the footprint of the proposed Peotone Airport. After departing City Hall -- where he left convicted underling Robert Sorich in charge of continuing to build massive patronage armies -- he got into the construction material supply business.
Jeepers. You think any contractors getting city or state public works deals would ever purchase their building supplies from Degnan?
If Tim Degnan needs cash, he could ask his friends, like 11th Ward mayoral real estate developer Tommy DiPiazza, of Bridgeport Village fame; or Freddie "Palm Beach" Barbara, the Bridgeport trucking boss, waste-management consultant and mayoral fashionista.
Still, Tim Degnan has always been decent to me, and I've admired the fact that he was a loyal strategist who spent decades in politics, wiping the runny noses of younger 11th Ward politicians, before leaving City Hall to go into business and make money for his family.
But even if you wanted to invest in the Emerald Casino deal in Rosemont when it was a sure thing -- long before it imploded with charges of Outfit connections of other investors and contractors -- you wouldn't have been invited.
You wouldn't even have known about it. It was a mystery, an inside play. A question reporters might want to ask Daley is, "Mayor do you support Sandra Degnan and other Emerald 'disadvantaged minority' investors getting a piece of another casino?"
So Jones wisely pulled back at the end of the day. But the fact that politicians even had the gall to propose such a thing makes it a cloudy day for those of us in Hapless Taxpayer World. Political wise men insist the bailout won't happen this year, but I wonder.
When it comes to gambling, would you bet your house against the Combine?
Where's the local AIA chapter?
That's what astounds me. I would join if they take a stand against corruption. They've done some good downstate. Why not locally?
Anyone know anything?
theres no money in architecture - waste of time
I was surprised no one talked about the chicago emergeny lights that cost $200.00 more per fixture and take twice as long to install.
We only work in the burbs and work for entrepreneurs. The government waste for public projects is just too much to bear.
dsc_arch,
Tell us more about the lights.
I am sitting right now in the 9th floor and I found out something very interesting. On October 1st they changed over to an online registration system. Previously you faxed in a form and they you waited for an appointment. It took them a week or more to get back to me. Then the appointments always seemed to be 5 weeks out. So that's 6 weeks. But some expediters seemed to get appointments right away.
And now? This place still seems really busy by the volume of stuff going through zoning but the long waits are gone.
The CW? Someone making the appointments was playing favorites. Hard to believe? ;-)
Not really!!!
Kudos to the new process and they need to get the rest of the older crew of PMs out of here and make way for new blood.
The office that I work for now got an expeditor about a year ago because the reasons stated above, time...money...less frustration, ect. I would strongly suggest an expeditor. What is interesting about these people is that City Hall becomes their office away from their office. They are also able to efficiently get approvals pushed through zoning. If you would like to know who we work with, shoot me an e-mail and I will talk to my supervisors about it.
This morning's Chicago Tribune story:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-zoning-wrapdec31,0,5876530.story
www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-zoning-wrapdec31,0,5876530.story
chicagotribune.com
NEIGHBORHOODS FOR SALE: PART 8
House of cards emerges in zoning-change game
TRIBUNE ANALYSIS: Market collapse is aggravated by system where aldermen benefit from campaign donations from developers
By Dan Mihalopoulos, Robert Becker and Todd Lighty
Tribune reporters
December 31, 2008
Like so many Chicagoans, Walter and Alice Sopala didn't like how their alderman let a real estate developer build a new condo building that placed their home in its shadows.
And they really don't like it now that the developer—a donor to the alderman's political fund—has abandoned his three-unit project.
"They've boarded up the windows and the doors," said Alice Sopala of the building in the 2900 block of North Sacramento Avenue. "Someone even broke in and stole something, like a jacuzzi. It looks pathetic."
Neighborhoods that recently bustled with teardowns and new construction are now filled with many such unsold homes, testament to a collapsed housing boom with a unique Chicago flavor: Much of the development was fueled by campaign donations to aldermen whose power trumped citywide planning.
The clout underlying the building frenzy was documented in the Tribune's yearlong "Neighborhoods for Sale" investigation, which included an analysis of more than 5,700 zoning changes approved by the City Council since the late 1990s.
"These guys ramrodded thousands of new units with these zoning changes for their campaign donors, and now those units are swamping the market," said Craig Norris, who heads the preservation and development committee of a community group in Wicker Park.
"Everybody who owns a house or condo is being affected by this," Norris added. "Sure, the banks and their easy credit had a lot to do with [the decline in home values], but the aldermen who did these 5,000 zoning changes have a lot of blood on their hands. The city could have planned better and limited the overdevelopment."
Mayor Richard Daley has maintained the tradition of letting aldermen have the final say over what gets built in their wards. Almost half of the zoning changes approved by the council members are done despite opposition from City Hall's own planning staff.
In case after case, aldermen ignored neighbors' complaints as well as planners' warnings that proposed projects would be too dense or would not be consistent with the character of the neighborhoods.
On Harlem Avenue in the 36th Ward, a developer who has given the alderman $3,000 used a zoning change to put up a five-story condo complex despite objections from neighbors. Now the builder is trying to entice potential buyers by offering a year without condo association assessments.
Nowhere has the correlation between clout and development been more obvious than the 32nd Ward, which saw more zoning changes than any of the city's 50 wards in the last decade.
Former 32nd Ward Ald. Ted Matlak used his zoning authority to allow new and bigger homes on scores of lots before his re-election defeat last year, pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from real estate interests who benefited from his development decisions.
Many of the new homes that he made possible in the Bucktown and Wicker Park neighborhoods have languished on the market for months and even years.
For-sale ads were placed by the politically connected developers who built the mansion neighbors dubbed the "French Embassy" in the 1800 block of North Wood Street and another multimillion dollar residence that replaced the once-popular Artful Dodger bar. But the builders of both houses found no buyers.
One new, $2.85 million house still for sale on Hermitage Avenue was first listed more than three years ago. The builder had given the alderman $1,500 after obtaining the necessary zoning change.
The lawyer who represented the builders seeking the zoning changes for all three of those 32nd Ward mansions was James J. Banks, the busiest zoning lawyer in Chicago and nephew of council Zoning Committee Chairman William J.P. Banks (36th). Even as the building boom faded this year, James Banks has continued to win aldermanic backing for dozens of new proposals."A lot of those decisions to up-zone have led to a glut of condos out there, and the market has dried up for those massive single-family homes," said Ald. Scott Waguespack, who narrowly unseated Matlak last year.
Waguespack, who blasted his predecessor for being too cozy with developers, recently blocked a 45-unit residential proposal in Bucktown. The rookie alderman cited public opinion for that and other anti-development decisions, but he seems to be making few friends in the real estate industry.
After Waguespack reversed a 2006 zoning change that would have allowed a retail and office project on Chicago Avenue, that project's developers sued the city in Cook County Circuit Court. The developers, who gave $5,000 to Matlak shortly before his re-election defeat, allege that Waguespack's reversal of their up-zoning reduced the value of the property by hundreds of thousands.
Daley has shrugged off concerns about how the development process works in the city. But federal authorities have shown an interest.
A federal probe that dates to at least 2007 has expanded to include interest in a 2004 letter to Daley from U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Chicago). Gutierrez lobbied the mayor on behalf of a zoning change for a developer who lent him $200,000 for a separate real estate deal. The congressman said he did nothing improper.
As part of the investigation, authorities have subpoenaed a broad range of city documents concerning the Galewood Yards residential project on the West Side, according to records obtained recently by the Tribune. An October 2007 subpoena to City Hall seeks all zoning records, building permits and Galewood Yards-related correspondence from Ald. Isaac Carothers, a mayoral ally whose 29th Ward includes the newly built project. Carothers has declined to comment.
Meanwhile, the housing collapse has left residents and developers hanging. The Sopalas feared their Logan Square home would be swallowed by a "condo canyon" after developer Cornel Moldoveanu built his project next door and won approval for a similar building on the other side of their home.
Failing to sell the three condos on Sacramento, Moldoveanu said Tuesday he is resigned to seeing the property seized by his creditors. The project's masonry contractor, hardwood floor installers and architect claimed they did not get paid for their work, county records show.
"It's gone," Moldoveanu said. "I didn't have enough money to finish it."
In an interview in November 2007, the developer said he had wanted permission from the alderman to build an even larger project on the site and rebutted the notion his new building would be out of scale with its surroundings.
"Everybody does that all over the city," he said. "Even bigger."
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Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune
Disgusting, but not surprising.
And I really liked the Artful Dodger... That just adds insult to injury.
I found out yesterday that I work for "Engineering Firm 1"
Wahoo! So yes, corruption is costing me my sanity...
any advice? I'm disgusted.
Move to somewhere with a cleaner government, like Zimbabwe.
While the above referenced aldermanic gaming of the system is definitely a problem, the city zoning & P&D departments are just as big a problem if not bigger.
The very, very poorly written zoning code and absurdly despotic zoning administrators have, yes, cost my firm and my clients a lot of unnecessary time and money. I'm got in a grey-area nightmare at the moment, in fact, and we are already being forced to discount our fee because of it. It is very rare that a project makes it through zoning and code check (not to mention landscape, driveway, and parking) without forcing us to jump through absurdly time-consuming hoops, none of which address any real issues that zoning / code check SHOULD be checking for, and all of which are fabricated out of the gaps in code books in order to protect the jobs of the people with their asses parked in the seat across from you at the department. Asinine. No department talks to any other department, papers get lost constantly, the poorly written books allow for each different guy to make up whatever he wants and none of it jives with what anybody else says or what you yourself, in concert with your zoning attorney, figured it would be. This is the fourth city I have worked in and by FAR the most poorly run zoning and building departments.
If it makes you feel any better I know a tax cheat who routinely gets zoning changes granted through relatives with the city. While we bust our ass and play by the rules, "they" cheat taxes, get favorable zoning and make little fortunes.
Luckily they all almost always eventually get caught.
Today was classic. I am working on a house renovation for a trader. It's a kitchen that turned into 2nd floor addition over the and then a gut and now he wants 8 foot ceilings in the basement. We needed a zoning "administrative adjustment" for the addition because it was 2 feet in the setback and it was over the existing 1 story part of the house. It took 5 weeks to get the paperwork back and another 4 weeks to finish our meeting with them.
So now we're digging out the basement within the footprint of the house and the dude at zoning wants the same variation! WTF!
I challenged him. Oh this should have been done at the same time. I told him that we gutted the kitchen in the first permit and since we were inside the house, that it should have required the same. He said that the neighbors should "be notified" that we are digging down. Under the terms of the adjustment, the neighbors on either side need to agree (usually) to get it passed the Alderman.
Zoning is about light and air. How is digging down going to change that? It doesn't change the square footage or anything else.
So a $250 check to the City and another couple of months!!!
This will be permit number 3 for this job.
Be glad he didn't call the board of underground...
Lesson learned - any piecemeal renovation project needing special approval (zoning variance, Underground) goes on one permit, the other work goes on a second one. That way, while you are attending aldermanic fund-raisers, the hum-drum work (interior renovations, electrical, etc) can go on unimpeded. Get the straightforward one first, put permit in the window. Be courteous to your inspector.
At the beginning it looks like it costs more (due to permit fees) but in the long run its cheaper (labor sitting on their bums).
Make,
I know it won't make you feel any better, but since my first story from above we have had more run-ins with landscape and zoning, and have today just received the permit for the interior build-out. We are going to have to get a zoning exception (really a variance) in order to get the outdoor patio through, but now they can at least finish up the interior work while the exterior cafe area gets through the ZBA.
As for notifying the neighbors, that has to happen anyway for an administrative adjustment. The owner has to send (via certified mail) a letter to adjacent properties letting them know what is going on and for their approval. The only way I can imagine them wanting you to notify the neighbors for digging down is for shoring so there are no soil collapses (and only if you are within a certain distance of the property line).
Speaking of the board of underground, one of our larger commercial projects was hung up in OUC for over a year. That is not an exaggeration. Luckily, the only way you have to go to OUC is if you go more than 12'-0" below grade, so almost all residential projects don't have to deal with that crap.
Here's a zinger:
http://www.suntimes.com/news/watchdogs/1397167,CST-NWS-watchdog26.article
As one of 15 members of the unpaid city advisory board, Ariola supported the mayor's plan to spend more than $13.5 million to build a $25.2 million homeless shelter for the Chicago Christian Industrial League -- a charity that had sold its longtime home in Greektown to Daley's friend Michael Marchese for a luxury condo development.
Ariola's Chicago Realty Co. was later hired by the league to oversee construction of the homeless shelter -- a project that has left the league in financial trouble, unable to pay a $10.8 million loan it got to finish the project.
The charity paid Ariola $301,700. At least a third of that came from city TIF money -- the funding Ariola's commission approves -- city records show. Ariola has served on the city board since 2001.
There's a blog post in response that sounds like someone from our boards:
This is not corruption, this is taking care of your friends. You don't go to the University of Illinois and Northwestern to end up like a regular schmuck. I think that Mr.Ariola is a fine kind of man for helping the City out with this project for homeless people. By getting such a big contract for himself, he can be certain that he won't end up homeless.I can tell the City really looks for experienced people to oversee projects. I am sure his resume had plenty of references with all the work his company did in two months.I think I will volunteer for the homeless Bankers committee and when they need someone to give counseling services to all the financially distressed bankers, I can get the contract through my Pathological Liars and Corrupt Politicians Company I will start up today.
Just read it - I didnt know Chicago had a board of ethics. That would be amazing to go see in action.
too bad Oprah isnt our new senator...shed put a stop to all this
I keep hearing from contractors that the city is over a year late on payments - would that be concidered corruption? Letting your vendors die on the vine?
Evil,
I bet this Aroila guy ain't waitin' for his money!
Actual Text from the House version of the stimulus bill. Sad indeed your state has to be singled out.
1 SEC. 1112. ADDITIONAL ASSURANCE OF APPROPRIATE USE
2 OF FUNDS.
3 None of the funds provided by this Act may be made
4 available to the State of Illinois, or any agency of the
5 State, unless (1) the use of such funds by the State is
6 approved in legislation enacted by the State after the date
7 of the enactment of this Act, or (2) Rod R. Blagojevich
8 no longer holds the office of Governor of the State of Illi9
nois. The preceding sentence shall not apply to any funds
10 provided directly to a unit of local government (1) by a
11 Federal department or agency, or (2) by an established
12 formula from the State.
Evil,
Kass singled out the older Dude who works with Daley's nephew...
Did you see that?
I havent read Kass in years -
What about getting people out for a drink?
Tomorrow night the Young Architect's Forum of the AIA is having an event at the Irish Bar in Helmut Jahn's building.
First Tuesdays Happy Hour
Tuesday, February 3, 5:30 pm- 8:00 pm
Everyone is welcome at our monthly gathering in our new location.
This event is sponsored by Young Architects Forum
Learning units: Not Available
Location: Emerald Loop, 216 N. Wabash Ave. (also 35 E. Wacker Dr.)
Member price: 0 Non-member price: 0
You can even invite Orhan! ;-)
Don't worry, I won't let him beat you up.
That sounds cool. We can all cry in our beers together.
Waa Waaaa Waaaaaaaa......
I'll come down after I teach studio. I'll be there about 6:20pm.
Shoot me an email when your leaving
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