Chicago makes 1st Amazon.com cut, but does that mean one makes the team

I wonder if Chicago, along with places such as St. Louis, Detroit and Gary, Ind., felt the same way I did some nearly four decades ago when I actually tried to make the baseball team back in high school.

Could the one-time Michael Reese Hospital on the South Side become the site of Amazon.com corporate dream?

I still remember the day a bunch of us would-be ballplayers were lined up outside a coach’s office, checking out the list to see which of us were still in the running to be on the team and which of us just weren’t deemed worthy enough to play.

FOR THE RECORD, I didn’t make the cut (which really wasn’t surprising, since I was never much of a ballplayer in my youth).

Which means perhaps I can identify with what is going through the mindset of some of the other Midwestern U.S. states that learned Thursday that Amazon.com’s dreams of building a second corporate headquarters do not include them.

Chicago learned that it is among the 20 municipalities still under consideration, as is Indianapolis. But the other places that had hoped they could get an economic boost learned they were out of the running.

Detroit’s rejection had many observers somewhat surprised. It was speculated that Amazon.com might find it a challenge to be a part of the revitalization of a major city – which would put that city’s officials in eternal indebtedness to their corporate priorities.

THE ONE REJECTION that caught my eye was that of St. Louis. Since that was the bid that had the endorsement of Gov. Bruce Rauner, who supposedly also was backing the Illinois-based bid of the Chicago area – which officially says there are 10 possible sites within the city or suburbs that Amazon.com could choose from.

Which means we’re not setting up the chance of an Illinois political civil war, with a governor trying to figure out whether his best interests involve supporting his state’s major city or the portion of another state’s major metropolitan area that happens to fall within Illinois’ borders.

Sears used to be retail giant; could structure regain significance by becoming part of Amazon.com complex downtown?

There are those who wonder if Rauner secretly would have rather seen a St. Louis bid prevail because he could take some credit amongst Southern Illinois voters while undermining the Chicago interests he sees as his politically partisan enemy.

The fact that Chicago made the cut means Mayor Rahm Emanuel was able to boast of “Chicago’s great strengths, access to talent, transportation, higher education, affordability and quality of life, which are the keys to growth and prosperity.”

WHETHER THOSE ISSUES will remain relevant as Chicago now has to go up against 19 other municipalities (three of which are the District of Columbia and nearby suburbs in both Virginia and Maryland) will remain to be seen.

As I recall from several decades ago, there were still several somewhat talented ballplayers who made that first cut, but wound up not making the roster when springtime came around and the baseball season began.

Personally, I wonder if the fact the city hasn’t united behind one single location may be a factor that goes against us (although I know the conservative ideologues amongst us are determined to believe that it will be Chicago’s Democratic leanings that will harm our city’s bid in the end).

Oak Brook campus that used to train McDonald's managers could become part of Amazon

If we can’t even decide where it should be, why should we expect Amazon.com officials to be capable of picking a place. Maybe they really will want proximity to the nation’s capital city, or a spot in Atlanta, Austin (as in Texas) or Boston for the headquarters campus they want to supplement the existing facilities in Seattle, Wash.

BUT FOR THE time being, Chicago can still dream about the possibility of a downtown complex that might even incorporate part of the formerly-known-as Sears Tower. Or maybe the old Michael Reese Hospital, or the suburban Oak Brook campus that once served McDonald’s.

U.S. Steel still dominant presence in Gary, Ind.

Unlike St. Louis or Detroit, who now will have to move on to other projects to dream about as a way of revitalizing their communities and creating jobs.

Or a place like Gary, which although Hoosier-based is close enough to the Illinois/Indiana border that Chicago could dream of some spillover benefits.

But instead will now have to set new ambitions for their existence, just as many a failed athlete has had to accept the fact he wasn’t good enough to make the team.

  -30-

Is it ‘fake news’ the way ideologues bandy about the ‘murder capital’ label?

I couldn’t help but be amused by a recent study released by the Pew Research Center – an analysis of the FBI crime statistics of recent years, particularly noting the murder rates of various cities.
 

Keeping the subways safe. Photos by Gregory Tejeda

It seems that during the past two years, murder rates have been on the rise in cities all across the United States. While I’m not trying to diminish the increases we have seen in Chicago during those two years, perhaps we need to study the concept from the national perspective – instead of taking seriously anything Donald Trump has to say about the city.

WHAT AMUSES ME is the way I’m sure those of us who are ideologically-inclined to think about things will want to discredit this particular study. Because it goes so contrary to the nonsense-talk that the conservative ideologues like to spew these days.

The facts just don’t back up their trash. Which I’m sure means the ideologues will try to claim the study is “fake news.” Something that doesn’t fit their narrative. So rather than correct the narrative, ignore the facts.

For what it’s worth, the study ranked the 30 municipalities in this country with the highest murder rates. As in how many people were killed for every 100,000 people.

For the record, Chicago’s rate is 17.52 murders per 100,000, which ranks the Second City at number 25.

THAT’S JUST AHEAD of Miami, and just behind Philadelphia. Places like Dayton, Ohio, Richmond, Va., and West Palm Beach, Fla., all are more dangerous than Chicago, by this standard.

 

Leaving Chicago takes one to more dangerous places

And when it comes to the Midwestern U.S., there are three cities that make the Top 10 – none of which are Chicago.

There’s Milwaukee (Number 10, at 24.15 murders per 100,000) and Detroit (Number 3, at 43.82 murders per 100,000).

And finally, filling out the top slot, is Number 1, St. Louis, with a rate of 59.29 murders per 100,000.

I’M SURE THE ideologues aren’t going to want to accept this one bit! They’re yelling and screaming and claiming there has to be something wrong with a study that doesn’t put Chicago at the top of the list, and one in which New York (with a homicide rate of about 7 murders per 100,000 doesn't come close to ranking on top.

No longer patrolling the 'murder capital'

These people who claim they live in the “real America” of small communities that are isolated from such violence, but really are isolated from many of the benefits of our society, will talk trash.

Of course, my own days as a police reporter came not only at a time some three decades ago when Chicago was routinely approaching 1,000 murders per year (a number we haven’t come close to yet in recent years), taught me that violence and crime literally can occur anywhere, and amongst just about anybody.

Among the Top 10 cities in the Pew study is Salinas, Calif. (Number 9, at 25.29 murders per 100,000), not a place people would typically associate with violence.

ONE OTHER ASPECT amused me – the fact that two Indiana cities made the Top 30 list; and neither one of them was Gary. Indianapolis, at 17.12 murders per 100,000, is Number 28, while South Bend, at 16.79 murders per 100,000, is Number 29.

TRUMP: Crime talk is cheap

Of course, Gary’s overall population has shrunk below 100,000 residents (estimated by the Census Bureau at 76,424 people in 2016), making it too small to be considered a significant-enough city for the study. Although I’m sure there are those ideologues who are going to rant that Gary must possibly be the Murder Capital. That is, if it hasn’t been overtaken by Chicago.

That is just a fact of some people living in the past, and in some cases a version of the past that never really existed except in their own minds, which is the only place they achieved a place of superiority within our society.

Besides, the reality of our society is that these kinds of studies do have a certain pointless aspect to them – in that they try to create a sense that some places are more safe than others. When in reality, ANY murder occurring anywhere is tragic – and is one too many.

  -30-

Some of us don't have the sense to see Chicago's wonders; we're losing people

It seems not everybody shares the love I have for this magical land built along the southwestern shores of Lake Michigan – the Census Bureau reported this week the Chicago metropolitan area is nearly 20,000 residents smaller than it was a year ago.

Long-standing cultural institutions not enough to bring people to Chicago, ...

That would be the equivalent of an entire suburban community being suddenly obliterated from the map – although I’m sure urban development types would tell me it is people fleeing the city proper to go live in those suburbs.

FOR THE RECORD, the Census Bureau estimates that the Chicago-area population (including the portions that spill over the state lines into Indiana and Wisconsin) is 9.513 million.

Officially, the last Census count in 2010 showed the Chicago area at 9.461 million people. So we’re still bigger than we were a few years ago.

But the reality is that the estimated population count for this year is a 19,570 person drop compared to last year, which was an 11,324 person drop from the year before that.

It seems that when compared to other cities across the Great Lakes region and Midwest, we’re typical. Technically, the word out of Detroit, Cleveland and St. Louis is worse.

BUT WE IN Chicago have always thought of ourselves as worthy of being held to a higher standard. Hence, we notice that places like New York and Los Angeles experienced population hikes of 2-3 percent.

... nor are the newer novelties such as 'Cloud Gate'

Not huge, but not insignificant either.

Now I’m not about to claim that the Midwest is somehow dragging Chicago down, making the city that blue dot on a red sea as way too many politically-motivated maps depict these days. If anything, I always thought Chicago was the spiritual capital of this vast region that thinks the Atlantic and Pacific oceans have nothing on that great body of water known as the Great Lakes, and that one-time Chicago Tribune publisher Robert R. McCormick sort of had the right idea that “Chicagoland” was truly unique – even if his reasons why were a little half-cocked (or maybe were ahead of his time in predicting much of the region's political support for Donald J. Trump).

Corncobs along the Chicago River ...

I did notice the one demographer who told Crain’s Chicago Business that the Chicago area population is “flatlining,” as in we’ve dropped about as low as we can get and this is the bottom.

ALTHOUGH ANYBODY WITH sense knows we don’t bottom out until we literally become a ghost town – a place of long-abandoned structures just waiting for Mother Nature to whack the one-time site of the Second City with a massive tornado that causes everything to come tumbling down.

... and a gaudier structure located upstream

Now I’m sure some people are going to want to claim the politically partisan bickering that has occurred the past few years is somehow scaring people away.

I doubt it.

Largely because I think many people have enough sense to disregard the blowhard tendencies of the government officials they elect. Besides, most of the people who want to make that line of attack are more interested in blaming the “other side” for the population loss.

This shoreline of Lake Calumet is firmly located within the city limits

THEY WANT TO lambast somebody, rather than try to figure out the solution to our problems; which, admittedly, do include the fact that a significant number of people are willing to up and leave what I will always regard as the most wonderful city on Planet Earth.

Where else will you find streets named for Goethe?

Even if there are some people, particularly of African-American persuasion, who’d rather move back South to the lands their grandparents fled. Segregation isn’t what it once was down there, and our land of opportunity has fallen off as well.

Or there may be all those other individuals who push themselves out further and further away from Chicago’s downtown core to the point where they don’t want to think of themselves as being part of the metropolitan area.

Although I’m always inclined to think those people ultimately will be “punished” for their lack of faith by finding themselves so far out in the middle of “nowhere” that they’ll wind up longing for the days when they were a part of that wondrous urban area that gave us deep dish pizza, electrified blues music and a century’s worth of mediocre-to-bad baseball – both South and North sides!

  -30-

Come back, grads! Come back to Chi

I found it amusing to learn that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is going about these days urging high school graduates not to give up on Chicago.

The Chicago Tribune reported about Emanuel speaking at three commencement ceremonies on Saturday, giving essentially the same message.

WHEN THOSE STUDENTS finish their education elsewhere, they ought to make sure to make a return trip to Chicago. Apply that education here. Make something of themselves in the Second City.

“You are our future,” Emanuel told one group of students, according to the newspaper. “We have a great future as long as you make Chicago home.”

What next? Will he be calling out for “Shane” to, “Come back!”

Although my guess is that Emanuel is far from the only political person who worries about the potential for brain drain causing problems for the future. I have heard too many instances of Michigan residents who, upon completing college, make a beehive right for Chicago.

THOSE WITH AN education and some special skills seem to think our metro area is a finer place to have a life than Detroit, or anywhere else in Michigan – a place many Chicagoans with some financial means use as a place for the summer cottage, of sorts.

Maybe Emanuel figures that Chicagoans with the same spirit of wanting to move up will make the same beehive for New York (except for those geeks who studied political science who will rush for the District of Columbia instead).

Although I just stumbled across New York Times story about the added cost of living in New York – to the point where many people who wish to live there just can’t swing it. Particularly if they also have significant financial debt that put themselves through college in the first place.

So where do lifelong New Yorkers with greater aspirations in life make a beehive to? Are they the ones who decide that they just have to live in Paris (if their education included any foreign language training) or London (if it didn’t)?

OR DO THE most sensible of those people realize how much nicer Chicago is in terms of being a place to actually live a life. Primarily for the fact that New York costs of living really do make Chicago out to be a financial bargain (unless you’re one of those people who thinks that slumming it is living anywhere outside of a penthouse apartment in the Trump Tower that sits on top of the foundation of the Sun-Times Building of old).

 

Am I alone in looking at Trump Tower and longing for what used to be?

Personally, I don’t think Emanuel has much to worry about. I believe many of those younger people who leave Chicago for a four- or five-year stretch (depending on how studious they are) will wind up returning.

I know I did. The only area college I applied to (Columbia College on Michigan Avenue) was purely my backup, and I quit thinking about the place once I learned I had options to experience life elsewhere for a few years.

Which was a smart move on my part. I got exposed to other people I never would have encountered here. While also having summer breaks to roam about the city and soak it in to the point where I couldn’t get in the car and drive back up Interstate 55 fast enough the day I graduated some 27 years ago.

EVEN WHEN I took work elsewhere (including a seven-year stretch in Springfield), I always have managed to come back to Chicago. The city just has a lure to bring people back.

And as for those who just aren’t latched by that lure? The ones who somehow decide that some place like Southern California is more attractive?

As far as I’m concerned, they can live in fear that the big earthquake will come along, and they will drop into the Pacific – a long way away from here where we'll enjoy the shores and beaches of Lake Michigan.

  -30-

Fortunately, we’re not Detroit. But could we have this year’s Tigers team?

I got my kick from reading the Standard & Poor’s study that says Chicago’s financial situation isn’t anywhere near as bad as that of Detroit – which officially qualifies financially as “bankrupt.”

DALEY: Our financial savior?

For among the factors that it says makes Chicago more sound is the long political reign of Richard M. Daley. The study by the financial agency says the fact that Chicago had one leader for 22 years is much different from Detroit’s constantly-changing leadership during that same period.

NOT THAT I’M ready to erect a monument to the memory of Richard M. anytime soon.

But it seems that most of the people who in recent months have been eager to lambast Chicago’s reputation by saying we’re on the verge financially of becoming the next Detroit are doing so for political reasons. They'd have us think that it was having Daley around for so long that put us on this economic path the city is on.

It becomes easy to dismiss their rants against the Second City because they’re so ideologically overloaded.

These kind of people probably want to believe that it was the city administration under Daley that somehow put us on the path to becoming a Detroit – while also dragging Illinois down to the status of another Michigan.

WHICH, BY THE way, seems to be a state that people who were raised there are eager to leave – to come live in Chicago for at least a stint.

That trend is obvious enough. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder recently tried deriding Chicago as a place for “yuppie(s),” while saying that Michiganders who want to be substantial should stay in Detroit.

SNYDER: Jealous of Chicago?

Which reeks of a sense of desperation from an official who realizes his place has become secondary in the Midwestern U.S. to that of Chicago (which gives Illinois a boost as well). Just as desperate as those Indiana government officials who get all excited whenever an ice cream stand in an Illinois border community moves over one town to the east to be amongst the Hoosiers.

But back to Standard & Poor’s, which said it did the study released Thursday because it heard all the comments coming from politically-partisan people about Chicago becoming Detroit and wanted to figure out for itself whether there was any truth to them.

FOR THE RECORD, the study contends that there are significant differences between Chicago and Detroit, to the point where it’s not really right to say that city number three (in population) is about to become city number 18!

Is the Asian Carp 'invasion' Chicago's fault?

The city has a higher median per-capita income than Detroit, along with higher housing values, less of an unemployment rate and a slower rate of population decline in recent decades.

Although on the latter point, it should be noted that while the city proper has dropped, the overall metro area has grown. Back when Chicago had about 3.5 million people, the entire state of Illinois was about 8 million.

Compared to the current 2.7 million living in the city and another 5.5 million in the Chicago suburbs. The rest of the state remains about the same in the just over 12 million.

NOW I HAVE relatives who live in Detroit and its suburbs (although I personally haven’t visited them on their home turf since nearly 30 years ago). I’m really not up to bashing about Detroit – or any other Great Lakes state. We are a region of the nation in and of itself and ought to be trying to find our commonalities.

It’s just that the rhetoric we often hear becomes so partisan as to be pointless. Just as much of the debate over the Asian Carp getting into the Great Lakes and ruining its ecosystem seems to become a matter of other states wanting to blame Chicago for somehow allowing this to happen.

We get nowhere when we let ourselves get split up. Although I would much prefer to be associated with Chicago than just about anywhere else. The bottom-line when it comes to Standard & Poor’s ratings is that Chicago’s debt is ranked “A+” with a negative outlook, compared to a “D” ranking for Detroit – how clear could that comparison be?

Could this be the Tigers' home for a season?

Except for maybe this particular baseball season, where I have to confess I wouldn’t mind if this year’s version of a Detroit Tigers ball club were based on the Sout’ Side, so as to spare us the mediocrity we’re likely to see this season.

  -30-

Most segregated, Chicago is? Or as close to integration as exists in U.S.?

One of my pet peeves is those people who always try to tag a label of “most segregated” when it comes to Chicago’s population.

Diverse or segregated?: Mexican Independence ...

They’re usually people who come from communities that are so overwhelmingly white (with people who like to say they’re “American” and not make any other reference to their ethnic origins) that the issue just doesn’t come up.

WHEREAS CHICAGO LITERALLY is a place where just about every ethnicity on Planet Earth can be found. And the city’s historic character has always been one of various neighborhoods representing ethnic states – of sorts.

The late newspaper columnist Mike Royko may have put it best in “Boss,” his biography of one-time Mayor Richard J. Daley, when he stated that the ethnic state-neighborhoods got along with each other about as well as they did back in the old country.

And in some cases, he wrote, they developed new prejudices to go along with the ones they already had.

I’m not denying the truthfulness of any of this back then, or the fact that it continues to exist to a degree in 21^st Century Chicago.

BUT I COULDN’T help notice a study done by the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia. They literally compiled a map of the United States that can show you the racial breakdown of just about every community across the mainland (no Alaska or Hawaii).

It confirms a Chicago with a predominant white north lakefront and Northwest Side, with predominantly black West and South Sides. As for the southwest and northwest, there are strips that separate the white from the black comprised of the growing Latino population.

And all throughout, but usually not in the black portions of Chicago, there are visible dots that indicates pockets of people of Asian ethnic origins.

... South Side Irish, or ...

But to what degree is an ethnic enclave an example of racism and segregation – except to those people who would prefer that the particular group in a given neighborhood didn’t even exist!

THE COOPER CENTER map for Chicago was very predictable to someone who was born here (in the South Chicago neighborhood, and lived at various points in Pullman, the East Side, Belmont Heights, Ravenswood and even a summer on the Near North Side) and has lived his life moving back and forth from other cities.

Although looking at maps of places like Detroit (where 8 Mile Road is literally the dividing line between black and white) or Atlanta (where it seems like the majority is African-American, with Latino and Asian pockets mixed in with white people who live separately), Chicago comes across as having quite a variety of people.

Even Sacramento, Calif. – the capital city that the study calls a “well-integrated large city” – seems to be integrated because the Asian population mixes in with both white and Latino neighborhoods; while having a lack of black people overall.

Chicago definitely isn’t a black or white place like some other cities (such as St. Louis, where it appears black people are grouped on the north side and white people are to the south – Chicago’s negative image, so to speak) in our nation appear to be.

IN FACT, LOOKING at the United States as a whole (rather than zeroing in on specific cities), the nation comes across as a mass of blue (for white people) in the eastern half, with multicolored dots that pretty much indicate cities of significance.

 

To the west, the map is largely colored in white; as in vast areas that are so sparsely populated that not enough people live there for any race to register.

 

So when I hear people argue that my wonderous home city is so segregated, I can’t help but wonder if they’re merely revealing their own hang-ups with regards to race.

 

We as a society have a long ways to go in terms of true integration -- and it's not helped by certain elements who are determined to thwart such efforts.

... Bud Billiken parades?

 

BUT I CAN'T help but think that a city well on its way to being 30 percent black, 30 percent white, 30 percent Latino and the bulk of the rest being Asian has already taken significant steps toward that direction.

 

Maybe it's the rest of the U.S. that has to catch up to us!

  -30-

EXTRA: Shows how little I know about hockey – the Hawks actually won!

I was amazed the Chicago Blackhawks even managed to create a Game Seven – I thought they’d flub out earlier. Then to take that final game into overtime before finally winning; it’s more drama than I would have thought possible.


Chicago's newest sports hero

Although you have to admit that having a lead, then blowing it in the final period of regulation play, and failing to take it back in the final two minutes, is so in character for a Chicago sports team.

BUT BRENT SEABROOK’S goal that put the Blackhawks back in the lead in overtime may have erased those memories. At the very least, there is a segment of the city that will forevermore consider Seabrook an honorary Chicagoan for life!

For those feeling a little bitter toward Detroit for even making it a competitive playoff, who knows? Maybe the White Sox will somehow beat up on the Tigers later this summer. Hey, anybody can dream! Because it’s more likely that the Tigers will give Detroit their payback against our sports scene when it comes to who even qualifies for the American League playoff scene.

All of this makes me wonder what Barack Obama was thinking about having a political fundraiser in our fair city on a day when many of us are more sports-obsessed – either for the Blackhawks or for the “Crosstown” baseball match-up.

He may have kept his remarks short. But he should have known better than to try having an event at all Wednesday night.

AND YES, WHILE waiting for a commuter train this morning, I saw one trio of people headed together for Wrigley Field – wearing Blackhawks jerseys with baseball caps for varying ball clubs. Although the well-figured girl with them had the skin-tight White Sox tube top to break the baseball partisan mix.

An old-time hockey example?

Insofar as my own thoughts about the Blackhawks, all I know is that after watching Chicago battle Detroit and Boston play New York, all that “Original Six” atmosphere made for an interesting round of playoffs.

Somehow, it just seems so wrong that Chicago now has to play the Los Angeles Kings!

Let’s all hope for a Chicago victory over L.A., combined with a Boston Bruins victory over Pittsburgh. A good ol’ fashioned Stanley Cup would be quite a sight.

  -30-

Meigs Field (finally) to become park

The remnants of Meigs Field remain in place. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

I used to mock Detroit because of what became of Tiger Stadium.

The ballpark where the Detroit Tigers played for nearly nine decades until 1999 remained in place for another decade.

IT WASN’T UNTIL 2009 that the building finally was torn down. While there are some groups that like to go out and play ball on the old infield, Detroit still doesn’t have any official plans for what to do with the site at Michigan and Trumbull avenues.

Pretty pathetic. Except that I’m not sure Chicago is any better. Just look at the saga of Meigs Field – the air strip that for just over a half-century allowed private airplanes to land their craft within a short cab ride of downtown Chicago.

I’m not here to rehash the politics of how former Mayor Richard M. Daley wanted to shutter the air strip on Northerly Island, and finally overcame the opposition of just about everybody by having bulldozers demolish the runways during one overnight in March 2003.

We still tell jokes about the “X” shaped gouges in the runways – making it dangerous for aircraft to try landing on them.



No more need for control tower on Northerly Island. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda



BUT IF ONE happens to drive (or walk) through the area near Northerly Island, it isn’t blatantly apparent that the air strip is long gone.

The old terminal building is still in place, along with the air traffic control tower. Even though it has been just over nine years since the last aircraft left the airstrip.

I realize that part of the reason nothing was able to be developed on the site were lawsuits that were pending by groups wishing to challenge the city’s ability to shutter an airport overnight – and without getting Federal Aviation Administration permission first.

Although it has been about six years since the last of those lawsuits were resolved.



Tiger Stadium is no more, yet its remnants won't wither away



YET WE STILL sit. It’s like Meigs Field has become Chicago’s version of Tiger Stadium.

Which is why I was intrigued by a Chicago Journal report that says work on revamping Northerly Island could begin come autumn.

The newspaper reported this week that the Chicago Park District (which owns the land) and the Army Corps of Engineers have plans to turn the flat layer of grass into a varied nature preserve with various ecosystems.

Almost like we can take the airstrip desired by business interests because of its proximity to downtown Chicago and turn it into a nature preserve whose biggest benefit is its proximity to downtown.

WITHIN A SHORT cab ride of the skyscrapers, one could see what the Midwest used to be like before all the European settlers arrived just over two centuries ago.

And at only $6.65 million, it probably is one of the cheaper projects undertaken by government – particularly since the bulk of the money will come from federal grants.

This may be one of the most cost-efficient projects the Chicago Park District takes on – especially since it won’t cost them more than $1.5 million in local funds.

Of course, I realize that a project hasn’t begun until work on it actually begins. Who knows what could come up between now and September (when officials supposedly will start looking for a construction company) that could delay the project’s beginning?

EVEN ONCE WORK begins, it could take up to five years before we can seriously think of walking through the nature and assorted grasses native to our region – because officials believe it would take up to five years for the grasses to be fully grown.

There also would be one other benefit to having this project in place – it would bring an end to the talk in some quarters that the best future for Northerly Island is to develop a casino on the lakefront site.

I comprehend that a casino is going to go somewhere in Chicago. I just don’t think the gaudiness of a flashy casino needs to be so close to downtown and the lakefront.

If you need bright lights on the lakefront, go watch that giant Ferris wheel at Navy Pier!

  -30-

Are we a step closer to high-speed rail?

High-speed rail fans envision these IL routes

I got my kicks on Monday not from Route 66, but from the potential future of the railroad tracks that parallel pretty closely to the Mother Road of old in Illinois.

Transportation Department officials distributed another $2 billion to various states meant to pay for work needed to advance local rail systems to the point where they could someday accommodate high-speed rail trains.

OF THAT AMOUNT, Illinois is getting $238 million (or just over 10 percent of the total).

Now a part of the reason our state is getting that extra money is because of the political games played by Republican types who wanted to think they could sandbag this idea with their actions.

They took a pass on accepting a share of the money, saying they’re not interested in having high-speed rail in their states. Perhaps they think they can kill off the concept if they turn the United States into a virtual checkerboard, with certain blotches that can’t accommodate the trains that could turn a Chicago-to-St. Louis trip from a five-hour drive to a two-hour train ride.

One of those states is our neighbor to the north – Wisconsin. But the state that contributed to the latest cash disbursement is Florida.

FOR THOSE OF us whose memories extend beyond the past 15 minutes, Florida is the state that managed to impact a presidential election in favor of the candidate who “lost” the popular vote. Perhaps that kind of action made Florida political people giddy enough to think they could kill off this project.

Instead, Illinois got part of the cash they should have received.  It will go toward upgrades on the tracks between Chicago and St. Louis – particularly the portion between Dwight and Joliet. Although I have to think that the bulk of attention on any high-speed rail route that cuts across Illinois and connects the state’s residents to its two urban areas ought to be in those freight yards in Cook County just outside of downtown Chicago.

Anybody who has ever taken an Amtrak train in its current form knows that is where the trains have to creep along at a turtle’s pace. That is going to be the place that needs a serious reconfiguration if the idea of a Chicago-to-St. Louis journey in just over 2 hours is ever to become reality.

Now I will be honest. It has been just over five years since I last rode an Amtrak train on that particular route.

IT CAN BE a pleasant-enough ride if one has time to spare for leisure. Although the Spartan conditions of contemporary Amtrak trains makes the idea of a “leisurely train trip” through the Midwestern United States seem to be an absurd concept.

My point being that while I like the idea of travel by train in theory, the reality doesn’t live up to the image many of us would like to create in our minds.

Giving a boost to the idea of high-speed rail could be the step that helps move inter-city train travel somewhere in the direction of becoming that mental image we’d like to have.

Heck, perhaps I’d even be tempted to take a train trip up into Michigan (the Chicago-to-Detroit routes could also benefit from some of the federal funding that was awarded by Transportation Department officials on Monday).

IT’S TOO BAD that I can’t contemplate a Chicago-to-Milwaukee or Chicago-to-Madison, Wis., trip in the same way – since Wisconsin state officials are among those who want to play ideological games with the idea of high-speed rail.

Because that is what much of the opposition to the idea has become.

Some people just want to have their automobiles and want to be able to ride up and down Interstate 55 (which is what becomes of the Stevenson Expressway once you get outside of Chicago) and want to instill some sort of ideological purity to the idea of not having to travel on a schedule.

I can almost buy that concept.

THE ONES WHO I find to be most ridiculous are the ones who try to claim that riding trains somehow undermines persona l freedom by having so many people ride together. As though the very concept of mass transit somehow undermines the democratic ideals of the United States of America!

I have even heard some ideological crackpots try citing the fact that high-speed rail is so popular in other countries as evidence that the idea is “too foreign” to work in the United States.

We even get some of that kind of ridiculous rhetoric from the states that tried turning away federal funds.

My guess is that they thought they’d be allowed to keep the money and apply it to some other project of their choice – or at the very least some sort of transportation-related project. Road repairs?

INSTEAD, THE MONEY goes to the people who are willing to play ball, so to speak, on high-speed rail.

Which may mean that Monday’s grants are a purely partisan political move by the current administration. I’m not complaining. If it helps make the experience of a train trip more convenient and pleasant, it may very well let me get out more often.

  -30-

Which dies first - Sun-Times or Trib?

When the Chicago Sun-Times recently renewed the contract of prominent sports columnist Jay Mariotti, many sports fans were upset at the thought of having to endure three more years of Mariotti’s often-acidic prose – particularly when it relates to the concept of Jerry Reinsdorf.

Yet my first reaction was to express a sense of wonder at the thought that the Sun-Times thinks it will still be publishing three years from now. Mariotti himself has said it is a guaranteed contract (he gets his money regardless of what happens to the newspaper), and the company’s CEO, Cyrus Freidheim Jr., has said there is enough money on hand to ensure the paper lasts another two or three years with the business status quo.

BEYOND THAT, HE’S promising nothing, unless serious changes take place in the current economic situation.

I bring this up because whenever people talk about dying newspapers and the concept of dueling newssheets becoming antiquated, they automatically assume it is the Sun-Times that will someday die off.

Long Live the Chicago Tribune! Col. McCormick’s newssheet of isolationism that tried to create the concept of “Chicagoland” as a separate nation apart from the elitist east coast will be the ultimate winner of the Great Chicago Newspaper War.

That is, unless it manages to die first.

Which of these newspaper nameplates will have a longer life?

IT IS WHAT I wonder every time I hear news accounts of business problems within Tribune Co. and the need for CEO Sam Zell to sell off yet more assets and let go more staff on the various newspapers he now owns. Officials let it be known Tuesday that about 60 Chicago Tribune editorial staffers will lose their jobs later this summer.

Most recently, the Los Angeles Times let about 250 people go, including about 150 members of the editorial staff who were producing the detailed product that allowed the newspaper to have dreams of being one of the best in the country (in reality, it falls short of the New York Times or Washington Post, as does the Tribune itself).

I keep hearing talk of the need for serious change within a year’s time if there is to be a long-term future for the Chicago Tribune and its sister newspapers. I couldn’t help but notice the Sun-Times earlier this year reporting that the Tribune Co. could default on its debts by the end of 2008.

So is it possible that the bloat of Tribune Co. will crush the Chicago Tribune, thereby leaving the Sun-Times as the newspaper war winner by default? It is no more ridiculous than the situations in Denver or Detroit, where recent accounts indicate the likelihood that the Detroit News and Rocky Mountain News will someday soon be the equivalent of Chicago Today – just a memory.

I’M SURE ANYBODY affiliated directly with Tribune Co. will snicker upon reading this and say I’m being ridiculous. They will claim the Tribune has so many editorial advantages over the Sun-Times that it can’t be expected to die.

Some will even cite as an advantage the recent scaling back and redesign of the Orlando Sentinel (a Tribune sister newspaper). Officials have said the Chicago Tribune will undergo a similar alteration at summer’s end.

A scaled back Tribune (seriously, they are talking about fewer pages, which they think will significantly reduce their printing costs) will be able to cope with the current economic situation and survive, while also still providing a forum for some of the detailed reporting on international and domestic events that the Tribune often offers.

The problem is one of perception. How many Tribune readers will be willing to accept a scaled-back product? It could be a case where a slimmer newspaper scares off the people who have been loyal readers to date, while doing nothing to attract the people who are not now (and maybe never will) read anything printed with ink on paper.

BY COMPARISON, THE Sun-Times has always been a scaled-back product.

Its readers often cite its smaller size as an advantage. Admittedly, it is an easier newspaper to read while riding a commuter train or as a passenger in a carpool (I hope nobody is trying to read while driving that car).

Chicago newspaper readers could have an easier time accepting a scrawny Sun-Times than they would a slimmer Tribune.

That actually is the problem with newspapers as a medium for disseminating the news – we readers expect more substance from a newspaper than we demand from a broadcast news program or even a website devoted to offering news and commentary.

WEBSITES CAN BE considered complete if they cover one issue particularly well, yet a newspaper is expected to provide the same detailed coverage of that issue along with detailed accounts of many other issues that are totally unrelated.

Municipal government, local business, culture, athletics. What website can cover City Hall, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the White Sox equally as well as any newsprint publication?

Any worthwhile newspaper had better be capable of doing them all well. Any paper that can’t do it isn’t worth my 50 (or 75) cents. In fact, it has me wondering if the Tribune on Sundays is worth the $1.99 they started charging last week.

I think my brother put it best when he said, “I’d better at least get 20 cents worth of better comics.”

WHICH NEWSPAPER DIES first will have nothing to do with the merits of what they are publishing, unless it becomes an issue that they are publishing so little that they are not worth reading at all.

Both of the Chicago metro newspapers come up with stories that are worth knowing about in order to fully comprehend the way things operate in the Second City. Personally, I wouldn’t trust any one newspaper to give me a full account of what is happening (and too many websites are so limited in their focus that they can’t be trusted by themselves to cover the world either).

There are times I wonder if Chicago would be better off if the old Daily News were still a newspaper (and not just the inspiration for the name of a Chicago-based website), giving us a third voice that tries to cover the entire metro region.

That ultimately is the problem if either the Tribune or Sun-Times dies off. It is true that the various suburban daily newspapers will continue to exist. They often do a more thorough job of covering their particular segment of the metropolitan area than either of the two downtown Chicago-based newspapers.

BUT THERE’S ALSO the problem that those papers can develop such a tunnel vision in thinking their particular region exists all by itself without ties to the rest of Chicago. They can miss the significance of issues that only a metro newspaper can capture.

Regardless of which newspaper goes first (and I would be thoroughly shocked if both were still publishing 10 years from now, even though back in the late 1980s I thought the Sun-Times wouldn’t live long enough to see the 21st Century), Chicago will lose something significant. At the very least, one of these papers won't get the joy of covering an Olympic games staged in its own home city.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Tribune Co. has its own (http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=85840) financial problems that make the U.S. government look well managed.

Is this news account just an example of Sun-Times braggadocio (http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/couriernews/business/1011276,CST-FIN-suntimes18w.article), or are things really that bad (http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=30111) at the World's Greatest Newspaper?

Is The Detroit News (http://crainsdetroit.com/article/20080707/SUB/807070321/1069) destined for the journalistic scrapheap?

Is the Rocky Mountain News really doomed because it doesn’t contain the word “Denver” (http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jul/01/milstead-media-meltdown-tests-two-newspaper-town/?printer=1/) in its title? Or will the Denver Post’s (http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2008/07/rocky_mountain_news_david_mils.php) lagging circulation bring it down?