A City Council committee\u2019s approval earlier this week of a property tax subsidy requested by the developers of the multibillion-dollar 1901 Project on Chicago\u2019s West Side tees up the matter for full council approval next week.<\/p>\n
Or does it?<\/p>\n
Even as they advanced the plan<\/a>, aldermen on the Economic Development Committee pressed representatives of the development team for answers to their worries about the diversity of construction subcontractors and opportunities for West Side residents to work on the project\u2019s $500 million first phase. Those issues likely won\u2019t be difficult to put to bed.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s another lingering matter that has the potential to delay council approval well past next week. That\u2019s the demand from United Here Local 1, the union that represents concessions workers at the United Center, that the developers require operators of future restaurants at the site to employ workers repped by the same local.<\/p>\n The Wirtz and Reinsdorf families, co-owners of the United Center and 1901 developers, have already signed on to United Here\u2019s representation of workers at the 6,000-seat music venue and new hotel, the focal points of Phase I. But restaurants outside the concert hall and the hotel, which could include operators from the neighborhood as well as glitzier steakhouses and such, are a different matter. The developers understandably don\u2019t want to limit the pool of potential operators by forcing them to negotiate with the union.<\/p>\n The restaurant industry by and large isn\u2019t unionized; Unite Here has been trying to change that. It has had some success organizing Chicago eateries. There\u2019s a list<\/a>\u00a0with more than 50 union restaurants in Chicago, some of them household names like Gibson\u2019s and Harry Caray\u2019s, all represented by United Here.<\/p>\n In other words, the union doesn\u2019t need the City Council to put its institutional thumb on the scale. There\u2019s nothing stopping United Here from attempting to organize whichever restaurants end up being part of 1901 once they\u2019re established.<\/p>\n In the meantime, a stalemate between the developers and the union at City Hall has the potential to hold up the project.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve already seen the City Council shoot itself in the foot by carrying water for local unions trying to organize private-sector workplaces whose owners prefer otherwise. We\u2019ve noted before how one of the largest multifamily projects on the drawing boards in Chicago \u2014 Onni Group\u2019s plan for 2,450 units in three high-rises at 700 W. Chicago Ave. \u2014 fell by the wayside<\/a> when the Canadian developer wouldn\u2019t agree to a union\u2019s demand to help the organize other existing Onni-owned buildings in Chicago.<\/p>\n Onni now has leased an empty industrial building on the Chicago Avenue property to Universal for an elaborate haunted house called Universal Horror Unleashed. In the face of what all agree is a housing crisis, Onni\u2019s residential plan will have to wait at least a decade for a more rational City Council.<\/p>\n In the bigger picture, here\u2019s what else is for rent. Aldermen have effectively leased their authority to unions, which now routinely wield the council\u2019s fealty to exert maximum leverage on Chicago businesses. Unions pay the rent every four years by contributing to aldermanic reelection campaigns.<\/p>\n In the case of the 1901 Project, here\u2019s a development that council members and Mayor Brandon Johnson have celebrated as by far the largest private investment in Chicago\u2019s West Side since \u2026 well, since the Wirtzes and Reinsdorfs built the United Center more than three decades ago.<\/p>\n Given Johnson\u2019s status as Chicago\u2019s most noteworthy West Sider, the location has much to do, we\u2019re sure, with his support for a $55 million property tax break over the next 12 years that the developers say they need to finance the first phase.<\/p>\n This page has very mixed feelings<\/a> about that subsidy, but is not similarly ambivalent about Chicago\u2019s desperate need to get the wheels of development turning again. Clearly, the council has no major issues with granting the tax break and can justify its action by pointing to the estimated $46 million in additional property taxes the site will generate over the coming dozen years even after the subsidy.<\/p>\n So there\u2019s no excuse not to finalize this deal promptly regardless of whether that induces a hissy fit from United Here and the Chicago Federation of Labor. The mayor, who has pointed repeatedly to 1901 as evidence of what he says is a thriving Chicago on his watch, ought to call on the council to do just that.<\/p>\n This practice of giving organized labor veto power over consequential private-sector developments in Chicago must stop. The 1901 Project \u2014 high-profile and centered in an economically deprived part of the city \u2014 is the ideal place to make a stand.<\/p>\n Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here<\/a> or email letters@chicagotribune.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A City Council committee\u2019s approval earlier this week of a property tax subsidy requested by the developers of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":795577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[153835,960,5310,5386,1818,324644,39749,59706,324646,324645],"class_list":{"0":"post-795576","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-1901-project","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-city-council","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-illinois","13":"tag-reinsdorfs","14":"tag-unions","15":"tag-united-center","16":"tag-united-here-local-1","17":"tag-wirtzes"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116572388112349223","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/795577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}