Illinois no longer growing ‘too slowly,’ it’s losing a few misguided individuals

I’m never sure just what to make of the Illinois population figures.
 

Too many view this sign in rear-view mirror

Our state was at an all-time high in this decade – although the recent estimates released this week indicate we’ve dropped a few people during the past two years.

BUT WE’RE ON the decline in terms of political representation, largely because other states can show larger population growths in percentages compared to Illinois. And since the number of members of Congress is a set figure, those states  have to get a larger share of the total.

I take as an example the official Census Bureau population count from 1960, when Illinois had 10.11 million people living here – of which some 3.5 million were residents of Chicago proper.

Compare that to the most recent official population count (taken in 2010) that showed Illinois with 12.83 million people (of which about 2.7 million were city residents, but when the suburbs all get added in put the Chicago metro area somewhere in the area of just over 8 million people.

Of just whom more than half bothered to cram their way into Millennium Park last month for the official Chicago Cubs Finally Won Something in Our Lifetimes celebration (if you believe the Cubbie propaganda).

BUT THE ‘NEWS’ that came up this week was the unofficial estimate the Census Bureau released of the nation’s population – an attempt to reflect on recent changes, even though the next official population count won’t be until 2020.

Illinois, which supposedly peaked at 12.88 million people in mid-2013, has since dropped by some 37,500 people. We now unofficially have 12,801,539 people who live in our state.

It’s no longer a matter of Illinois isn’t growing fast enough compared to southwestern states. We’re actually losing people.

Is this view really more pleasant? My feet were firmly planted on Illinois soil when I took this photograph of Indiana.

Which already has the political geeks out there ranting and raging and trying to assess blame! It’s Madigan’s fault, say the Bruce Rauner people. Because naturally, everything is the fault of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago.

They'll miss it after they're gone!

MY GUESS IS that if the Cubs fail to repeat as World Series champions during the upcoming 2017 season, we’ll hear that it’s Madigan’s fault.

While others are equally quick to spew the trash talk that it’s Rauner’s fault. After all, the drop has begun about the time he began his gubernatorial campaign and term.

We’re supposed to believe that the 37,500 former Illinois residents all fled because they’re tired of our partisan political brawls. They want to live in a place where political people behave like grown-ups.

Fat chance finding such a place! My own observation is that political people in general have a touch of ego, mixed with arrogance and seasoned with a lack of intelligence. Illinois isn’t unique in that regard.

PERSONALLY, I’D BE inclined to think the weather is more of a factor in terms of people wanting to leave this state, or the Midwest in general. Except that the weather here during the winter months has always been absurdly cold, and it didn’t stop the growth of the past.

Even if it were, then I’d have to say we’re better off without those so weak-willed that they have to have a perpetual 82-degree and sunshiny temperature in order to survive.

Just think of those people who won't be on hand in that future year when we get an all-Chicago World Series and the White Sox achieve ultimate victory over a certain other ball club.

I know personally, I don’t have any interest in leaving the area – even though I do some work these days that takes me across that not-quite impenetrable barrier known as State Line Road and over into Indiana. Even into what some people regard as the depths of Gary – the one-time Steel City, the City of the Century or the Murder Capital of the Nation (even though it really isn’t).

All I know is that every time I do my business, I always feel a certain twinge of relief every time I drive back along Interstate 80 and see the back of the sign marking the Illinois/Indiana border. Because it means I’ve returned to the Land of Lincoln where things make sense – even if it means some 37,500 people are too clueless to realize that!

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Rival states take their pot-shots at Illinois, Land of Lincoln fights back!!!

It’s not at all odd to see the states of the Great Lakes region compete amongst each other to gain some sort of edge in the public eye – I’m old enough to remember those “Gov. Thompson (as in Tommy, not Jim) Welcomes You to Wisconsin” signs that used to greet people driving north on Interstate 94 out of Illinois.

We don't always play nice w/ each other

Or all those “Illinoyed” billboards that Indiana used as part of a state campaign to try to encourage businesses to relocate to the Hoosier state.

IT WORKED IN terms of drawing some small companies across the border – to parts where they’d still be close to Illinois and the Chicago metro area, which was the source of their real business.

But it never managed to draw anything huge away from Illinois – after all, no matter what the lower tax rates would be, you’d still be in Indiana. “You get what you pay for” is the rule that ought to apply here.

The point of this recollection is that it’s not new for the Midwestern states bound together by their proximity to Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes to see each other as rivals.

So perhaps it shouldn’t be odd to learn that the Whole Foods chain of high-scale supermarkets is making a move of its distribution center that provides goods to their Chicago-area stores.

THAT DISTRIBUTION CENTER had been located in Munster, Ind. – a municipality located right on the Illinois/Indiana border across from suburban Lansing.

EMANUEL: A late Valentine's Day gift?

It’s now moving to the Pullman neighborhood in Chicago proper – a site that offers one major asset that Munster could never have competed with. The Pullman neighborhood is right on the Bishop Ford Freeway, which leads into the Dan Ryan Expressway.

In fact, the site of the new center to open in 2018 will be right on the freeway. It will be easy for Whole Foods trucks to hop right onto the highway, then go anywhere in the Chicago metro area to make deliveries of goods to be sold in their supermarkets. As opposed to now, where those trucks have to fight their way through the traffic mess that often is the Borman Expressway (we really do need the Illiana to be built) before they can get into Chicago.

There may have been some sort of tax break that Munster could have offered through the fact that Indiana does hit its businesses with lesser rates. But they also can’t offer the amenities that a Chicago or Illinois can. You pay more, but you also get more.

Strengthening Midwest presence with Chicago

I’LL ADMIT IT probably was a bit cold for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to be seen snickering and to refer to the move as a “late Valentine’s Day (gift) to Indiana,” but it certainly wasn’t any more colder than the trash talk that the surrounding states usually spew – often by trying to portray Chicago as some sort of hellhole that draws everything down.

Which, to me, often sounds like the petty whining of places that realize they can never match Chicago’s many amenities.

Now I don’t mean this as an Indiana-bashing session. Heck, I do work for one of the daily newspapers in Northwest Indiana and often spend time in Gary itself. Which for the record is a place that has so much potential, but can’t seem to get itself together for so many reasons – many of which are beyond its control.

There are times when I think Lake County and the surrounding areas of Northwest Indiana ought to just de-annex from the land of Hoosiers and become a part of Illinois. Maybe our people could make Gary succeed – rather than the Indiana officials who, at times, seem obsessed with the idea of holding that city down.

Could we do better with it?

BUT IT’S NOT likely there will be any shift any time soon of the Illinois/Indiana border from its current location between Chicago and Hammond to some place east of Valparaiso.

But our state may have accomplished something greater for the public image. For it seems the advertising professional who created that “Illinoyed” campaign for Indiana state government now works for Illinois.

Crain’s Chicago Business reported the newly-created Illinois Business and Development Corp. hired Kelly Nicholl – who as it turns out never gave up her condominium in downtown Chicago, even while working out of Indianapolis.

Illinoyed no more?

Perhaps even she couldn’t bear the thought of being too close to the rest of Indiana, which will now be the target of Illinois’ attacks!

 

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EDITORS NOTE: For those of you who'd like to read the Hoosier perspective, WBEZ-FM's Northwest Indiana correspondent provides a comprehensive report.

This year, the cold chill of winter is worse than the slop of all the snowfall

I’m usually the type who complains about snowfall while also downplaying the effect of cold temperatures during the winter months.

After all, one can always put on a sweater. Or be like my brother, whose winter coat gets supplemented by a couple of sweatshirts. Snowfall, however, gets messy and creates the road conditions that causes idiots who don’t know how to slow down to skid all over the place.

WHO’S TO SAY if it was sloppy weather that caused the Monday night incident where a truck crashed into an Illinois State Toll Highway Authority worker who was trying to provide relief to the driver of another truck that was pulled alongside Interstate 88 near Aurora? The worker is dead, while an Illinois State Police trooper who tried to aid, remained in critical condition, according to the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times newspapers.

But this winter is the one that has me wondering if I’ve been a bit misguided, while also introducing the weather geek term “polar vortex” into common vocabulary.

This is the winter where we’re on our second spurt of temperatures reaching low levels most commonly found in the Arctic Circle. If this is the level of cold commonly reached at the North Pole, it’s a wonder that Santa Claus hasn’t relocated his red-clad butt to a tropical island somewhere.

Perhaps that one where Gilligan and the rest of the crew (including Mary Ann with all her coconut pies) managed to go undetected for all those years!

Ditching Gilligan for Santa Claus?

IT’S COLD. AND it’s ridiculous when we were supposed to get all excited about the fact that on Tuesday, we reached a “high” temperature for the day of 1 degree. We actually had our thermometers creep to levels above zero degrees.

Consider that water freezes into ice at 32 degrees (compared to zero degrees Celsius, because some of us would think that is somehow “foreign”). Bottom line. It’s cold.

So cold that I’ve lost track of how many days our schools have been forced to close. If this trend keeps up, we’re going to have a school year that will come close to making Independence Day a day off from class – rather than just part of the school day. We don’t know how many wintry blasts of cold we’re going to get. We can only hope this second one is the last one.

Some Hoosiers don't know how to share

Personally, I’m coping well with the weather because I’m able to remain indoors. I haven’t had to travel anywhere, so I haven’t. I did wake up Tuesday morning with a couple of toes feeling numb. But heavy socks helped deal with that.

BUT I AM starting to feel a bit stir crazy, as would – I expect – just about everyone else who has been confined indoors due to the dangerous cold temperatures we’re experiencing now.

I could have done without the personal educational experience of how cold it gets in the Arctic and on Antarctica on a common day (although, to be honest, the South Pole has its record lows at levels we can only hope we never experience in Chicago).

This has been a season that has brought out the best, and worst, in all of us. Sometimes, at the same time.

Take the tale coming out of Gary, Ind., and its neighboring community of Portage. Gary, because of its proximity to Lake Michigan, experienced significant levels of snowfall, while Portage was just far enough back that it didn’t get much.

SO PORTAGE OFFICIALS, according to the Times of Northwest Indiana newspaper, had their Public Works Department crews go into Gary to assist with snow cleanup on the streets. It was a gesture of kindness from the Portage mayor.

Except that other village officials were upset that they weren’t consulted. Some of them would have preferred that the aid not be provided to Gary. I wonder if the fact that Gary is an African-American dominant city – 84.8 percent – is a factor. Regardless, it comes across as pretty petty. A colder gesture than the temperature itself.

Trashy-weather TV?

This will be a winter we tell stories about in the future. Although I wonder how far those stories will get exaggerated. At the very least, we won’t be hearing stories 30 years from now about how people walked to school in 10-below temperatures.

They stood home and watched trashy programs on television (I just caught the end of “Robocop”). Which is all the more reason to hope that this is The End. As in, cue The Doors.

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We’re back on “real” time. What’s real?

We all did the routine this weekend of resetting our clocks, on account of the fact we’re off Daylight Savings Time and will now spend the next four months on standard time.

Which some people like to get all worked up about. Daylight Savings Time is some sort of artificial scam that takes us away from viewing time in terms of the way the Good Lord willing meant for us to do so.

PERHAPS I’VE JUST been reading too much of the commentary posted by my Facebook-type “friends.”

But yes, the whole issue of time has gotten some of them worked up – particularly those with ties to Indiana. For that is a state that particularly confounds the whole concept of time. Which makes me wonder if their confusion has the potential to spill over the state line into Illinois.

Some of us are just itching for an excuse to rant about something. Perhaps they’ll find a way to blame Daylight Savings Time on Barack Obama!

Indiana is a state in the Eastern Time Zone – except for those portions around Gary and the state's Southwestern portion right on the Illinois/Indiana border. They follow the concept of “real” time – which I define as being whatever time it happens to be in Chicago.

LET THE REST of the world follow our clock, as far as I’m concerned!!!

I do remember a conversation I once had with a college classmate who was from Indiana (Wabash, if I recall correctly) who tried to argue that Indiana was most logical when it came to time zones and Daylight Saving vs. Standard time by saying, “We never have to change our clocks.”

Considering how the whole concept of moving forward or backward an hour confuses many of us, that may be a legitimate point.

Although I wonder at times if the fact that the bulk of Indiana never experiences the once-a-year concept of gaining an hour of sleep means they’re somehow not-quite rested enough. Maybe that’s why Hoosiers are a unique (and, at times, illogical) breed.

PERSONALLY, I VIEW the concept of Daylight Savings Time as the norm – largely because it’s what we experience for eight months out of the year. It is the concept of Standard Time that has become bizarre – and depressing.

Let’s face it. Who really wants the shortened daylight that’s going to literally turn sunset into some time about 4:30 p.m. Although I have to admit those days back in mid-June when the sun didn’t go down until about 9 p.m. seemed equally freakish.

Not as odd as the idea of the midnight sun somewhere in isolated Alaska. But close!

Yet there are those who will vehemently argue for the demise of Daylight Savings Time just as intensely as any National League baseball fan who can’t accept the fact that the existence of the Designated Hitter has become the norm in baseball and that it is THEY who are the oddballs.

I MENTIONED FACEBOOK earlier, literally because I read this debate about whether Indiana should shift time zones, with many insisting their state is Eastern (as though they can’t see on a map that they – and Michigan too – ought to be Central time).

I’d hate to see that shift mainly because I can envision the chaos that would result if State Line Road also became a time zone boundary. The southeastern portion of the greater Chicago metro area would literally be ahead of the rest of us – and would further be isolated.

Where time was a constant

If anything, there is one place that may have the whole concept of time correct – the ballpark. For I still remember a feature story I once read about people who worked at Comiskey Park during the off-season. The writer noted that the clock on the old center field scoreboard (with all its lights, pinwheels and explosives) was an hour off – because it never gets reset.

Because by the time the baseball season begins again, it will once again be Daylight Savings Time – and all will be right with the world.

  -30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: My own confusion with the time change involves having to remember which of the clocks around my humble abode need to be reset, and which will reset automatically. If I get careless, I gain two extra hours, and my whole routine is off for days to come.

How will we satisfy our “fix” for pro, if not quite Major League, baseball?

Will this suburban Wrigley replica really sit empty for a season? Will the sheriff be forced to evict a ballclub, leaving their gear out on the streets of Schaumburg? Will the Flyers fly again? For answers to these questions, tune in this spring. Same bat (and ball) time! Same bat (and ball) channel!



It is with bemusement that I have been watching the world of “Independent” baseball this off-season, and I must admit to great confusion about which ballclubs that exist on the fringes of the Chicago metro area are actually going to be in existence this summer.

For the biggest change among professional ballclubs that are not affiliated with the major leagues impacted the Northern League – the eight-team circuit that had ballclubs in Gary, Joliet, Schaumburg and up in Lake County (among others).

FOUR OF THE eight teams in that league announced a few months ago that they were leaving the league to join something called the American Association, which is a conglomeration of several regional independent leagues who think that by sticking together, they can create something substantial.

The Gary Southshore Railcats were among those four teams, which means their on-field fate will be determined in 2011 playing against teams such as the St. Paul Saints and the El Paso Diablos.

Yet the four teams that got left behind – they were given use of the name Northern League, but are so few in number that it would not be worth playing on their own – were the four ballclubs based in Illinois (mostly the Chicago area).

What gives? Do the big-wigs of independent baseball think the Chicago metro area is unworthy of their product?

THOSE TEAMS OFFICIALLY planned to merge with the remnants of the old Golden League in California and the United League to create their own “super-league” of independent ballclubs consisting of ballplayers whom no major league team was interested in having play for any of their own minor league affiliates.

One can literally walk from Joliet Union Station to the ballpark



Fans of the Joliet JackHammers have figured out that is not going to happen for them. The team officially went bankrupt, and a new group is putting together a ballclub (to be called the Slammers) to play in the team’s downtown Joliet stadium to play in the Frontier League – where they will get to be the fierce arch-rivals of the Crestwood-based Windy City Thunderbolts.

The old JackHammers went out of business because of much back rent owed to the city, and many other vendors are looking for their money. Which is the same fate that is befalling the Schaumburg Flyers.

Earlier this week, the Flyers officially were evicted from Alexian Field, the Schaumburg-based stadium located within walking distance of the Metra commuter station where they played their games. They have until the end of next week to get out.

OR MAYBE WE really will be treated to the sight of the Cook County Sheriff’s Police being called in to physically remove the team’s equipment from the ballpark? Would Sheriff Tom Dart have qualms about carrying out that eviction?

Some people speculate that a buyer for the Flyers can be found in the near-enough future that these financial matters can be resolved in time for Opening Day (which for these independent leagues comes in May). Others say there is a chance Schaumburg officials might just prefer to leave their ballpark empty for a year and focus on 2012 and beyond.

To me, the Joliet and Schaumburg franchises (along with any replacement ballclubs that will come in the future) have significant advantages in terms of their potential markets. Schaumburg is in the heart of those northwest suburbs that some think are the only part of the Chicago area that matters, while Joliet is in the heart of the county that (in terms of percentage, nearly 40) had the largest population growth during the past decade and is in the city that is now Illinois’s fourth largest.

They also have stadiums that are elite facilities compared to the buildings that some allegedly professional ballclubs in smaller cities are forced to use.

ALEXIAN FIELD IN Schaumburg is the building whose field dimensions were meant to copy-cat Wrigley Field, while Silver Cross Stadium in Joliet (both are named for area hospitals) is right in the heart of the downtown area – just a block from the county courthouse and Union Station and only a few blocks from the casino/luxury hotel that provides the area with a nightlife.

When those ballclubs were new and professional baseball being played nearby was still a novelty, those teams drew well (by minor league standards) and had potential for being cash cows.

Yet when the economy takes a plunge and people everywhere are cutting back on entertainment expenses (including the number of trips they will take to see a game), these teams still have more significant operating expenses because they’re not playing in places like Shreveport, La., or Wichita, Kan.

It’s also not like the teams themselves use their on-field play as the drawing card. My guess is that most people who would say they like independent baseball like catching a particular atmosphere, and couldn’t tell you how many times the local team won a Northern League championship.

FOR THE RECORD, Gary Southshore won in 2005 and 2007, while neither Joliet nor Schaumburg ever won a league title. It’s not like in smaller cities, where the ballclub is the sporting representative of the city. We may well be spoiled by the competent play of the Chicago White Sox, or the ineptitude of the Cubs that some find endearing (but I find embarrasing to the civic reputation).

Which is why I’ll be watching the situation in Schaumburg to see where, if anywhere, they wind up. And in Joliet, it will be interesting to see if the locals notice anything different about moving to a new league – one that actually has an age limit of 28 in order to preserve the image that the ballplayers are up-and-coming young talent.

Rather than aging geezers hoping desperately to use a few at-bats to stage their “comeback” to Major League Baseball – most likely with the Chicago Cubs. No wonder the North Siders are hopeless.

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Jackson, Coleman returning to Chicago?

Michael Jackson and Gary Coleman were both child stars back in the 1970s whose careers peaked in the early 1980s. Both in recent years had seen their public images devolve into pathetic jokes. And after their recent deaths, both have parents who would like to see their legacy wind up in the Chicago area.

Both of the entertainers are Chicago-area natives (Jackson from Gary, Ind., and Coleman from Zion) whose memories managed to pop up in the news on Thursday

IN THE CASE of Jackson, it was because his father was in Gary this week to stand alongside the city officials who have dreams of developing some sort of Jackson-memorabilia-laced attraction that would bring people to Northwest Indiana similar to how Elvis Presley’s one-time mansion in Memphis is a tourist attraction for that Southern city.

The people who are actually in charge of overseeing Jackson’s estate say they’re not involved with any of the Gary dreams. But that isn’t stopping father Joe Jackson (whom some perceive as a parental version of Ike Turner – does that make Michael the equal of Tina?) from trying to bolster his image by offering some familial credibility to the talk of developing a 300-acre theme park honoring Jackson (which to my mindset sounds too much like Dollywood for Ms. Parton).

That park would be much more grandiose than anything that ever existed in Gary back when the Jackson family actually lived there. The actual abode was a rather humble structure that wouldn’t be noteworthy at all, except for the people who lived there several decades ago.

There are those people who see this Gary project as a pitiful attempt by the Jackson patriarch to gain one last bit of something for himself, even though Michael Jackson himself when he last visited Gary in 2003 signed an agreement to help market development of a Gary-based Jackson Performance Arts Center.

EXACTLY WHAT “MARKET” means is questionable. Who knows how much he would have supported the project, had he not died last June at age 50? Despite the rhetoric being spewed now, I find it questionable to think that this project will ever come about.

I would think those people who want to see the Jackson “experience” for themselves would want to see “Neverland,” the mansion where Jackson lived for many years and turned into an overglorified theme park where he could experience a prolonged adolescence. I doubt they want to see inner-city Gary.

I don’t buy the 1 million people per year visiting Gary just to see the old house.

I’m also not sure whether there will be one body coming to Zion anytime soon – the remains of television star Gary Coleman.

DESPITE A WIDELY-publicized rift between Coleman and his parents, Sue and Willie Coleman say they want custody of his body so they can bring it back to the town near the Illinois/Wisconsin border where he grew up – and was first discovered doing ads and making appearances in certain hit shows from the era.

I still get a kick out of seeing the old Good Times and Jeffersons re-runs where Coleman spars verbally with Jimmie Walker and Sherman Helmsley respectively, and I still remember his performance in “The Kid from Left Field,” the film that depicted him as the child manager of the San Diego Padres who (with his father’s help) leads the team to a World Series appearance (against the1970s-era Chicago White Sox with the flowing shirt uniforms with big collars, but no shorts).

I must admit, though, that I find watching old “Diff’rent Strokes” re-runs to be unbearable. It’s enough to make me stay away from Channel 23 (no “Me TV” for me).

Gary gets old pretty quick, particularly since we are now fully aware that “cute little boy” was really a miserable teenager upset that he was already type-cast for life as a kid nearly as adorable as Rodney Allen Rippy (who out there remembers Jack in the Box, which the last I checked only existed in a few Southern Illinois towns?).

WHAT ARE THE chances he becomes a permanent part of the suburban Chicago scene? It all comes down to his family ties. How distant was Coleman from his parents, who adopted him as a baby? They learned of his death from news accounts, and were unsure if Gary had ever told his ex-wife about their existence.

It was that ex-wife, Shannon Price, who made the decision to take Coleman off life-support, which is what resulted in his death last week from a brain hemorrhage at age 42.

Coleman’s former manager is now working with the parents, and he says they’d like to get his body as soon as possible and bring it to a final resting place in Zion. But there is still some legal squabbling over who should have a say in the matter.

So who’s to say if we’re ever going to get the sight of a Coleman grave at a Zion-area cemetery, making it the Chicago-area equivalent of ‘60’s rocker Jim Morrison, with fans of the old show occasionally causing a ruckus as they try to catch a glimpse of his tombstone, and possibly defacing it with a “Watchu talkin’ ‘bout, Willis!”

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Economy gets the blame for taking down one Chicago area sports franchise

Economic troubles have everybody cutting back, and that has one professional sports franchise in the Chicago-area thinking that the responsible thing to do is to shut down operations for one year.

It’s not the Blackhawks or the Bears, or even the Cubs (although after the way they’ve performed in the playoffs the past two years, they ought to shut down next year out of a sense of shame of being seen in public).

IT’S THE STEELHEADS, the Gary, Ind.-based team in the International Basketball League – one of the minor leagues that has teams in small cities and are filled with ballplayers who are a second too slow to excel in the National Basketball Association.

When the league plays out its 2009 season, there won’t be a team in Gary (or in Merrillville, Ind., a nearby town that the team was considering relocating to).

Now most of the economics-minded people who have said in recent weeks they think professional sports will be one of the few industries that won’t be significantly affected by the struggling economy have focused their attention on the “major league” level.

Major League Baseball. The NBA and the National Football League.

THE THEORY IS that people will still want something to provide a diversion in their lives, particularly if times get tough and people are having to struggle with lower incomes or higher prices (or a combination of the two).

And their love of root, root, root(ing) for the home team will help them get through the tough times.

Even if they wind up going to a game or two fewer per year, it will mean more instances of watching their favorite team on television. That could mean higher ratings, and since major league sports teams rely heavily on broadcasts of their games to bring in revenue, it could be a plus.

But all of those factors are completely irrelevant to professional sports teams at lower levels, which rely almost entirely on their gate receipts and concession sales to bring in revenue.

FEWER PEOPLE ATTENDING games (particularly at minor league levels where crowds are smaller by their very nature) means less money on hand, which could mean the difference between barely breaking even and losing one’s shirt.

That was the reality that confronted the Gary Steelheads, who said they expected to encounter serious problems with getting people to purchase season-ticket plans or local businesses to buy sponsorships that would entitle them to advertising in the arena or in the programs and other team publications.

And the team’s owners preferred the idea of shutting down for a season, rather than going for broke (literally) by playing out the 2009 season.

“We don’t want to field a minor league team in this economic climate,” attorney Jewell Harris Jr., told the Times of Northwest Indiana newspaper. “It’s just not feasible.”

TEAM OFFICIALS TOLD the area newspaper that the realities of minor league sports is that few franchises have glorious histories with long ties to their respective cities. Some leagues have franchise changes virtually every year.

Even insofar as athletic activity on the basketball court, minor league teams have constant turnover in terms of players. So it is likely that none of the current players would still have been on hand by 2010, even if the team were to play the season next year.

So officials with the Steelheads are optimistic that they can shut down operations in the arena for one year, then come back to the league fully restructured.

The trick is whether area fans will remember that there was once a basketball habit that could be satisfied with a team based at the far southeast corner of the Chicago metropolitan area.

WILL FANS REALLY care enough to want to watch a team that pulled the highly-unusual move (for a sports team, at least) of taking a season off? This move makes it very clear that a sports franchise is primarily about the front office, rather than the activity on the athletic field or court.

Will the Steelheads lose any momentum they ever had gained during their eight years of existence in their current league (and previously while playing in the Continental Basketball Association)?

And will area basketball fans make the same discovery that fans of minor league baseball made back in the 1950s – that superior-quality ball could be watched on television for less time, money and hassle than going to the local minor league team’s games.

Now some minor league baseball fans will note the sport’s minor leagues were resurrected in the 1980s by teams that marketed the entertainment experience of actually attending a game.

BUT THE STEELHEADS would need to actually play games next year to take advantage of that mentality.

So the bottom line question is “Will the Steelheads actually return to basketball in 2010?”

Or are they destined to join the ranks of obscure Chicago-area sports franchises (the Stags, the Hustle, the Cougars) that will have only one unique characteristic about them. They’ll be the answer to the following trivia question:

“What Chicago-area basketball team was never heard of by most Chicago-area sports fans until the day they announced they were ‘taking a break’ from playing ball?”

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EDITOR’S NOTES: It will be interesting to see how long this website remains (http://www.steelheadshoops.com/) active. The league is considering new teams for next year in Eugene, Ore., and Olympia, Wash.

Drawing about 1,500 people per game to an 8,000-seat arena in downtown Gary, Ind., (http://nwi.com/articles/2008/11/21/sports/top_sports/doc2f43034264a17709862575080003ba75.txt) this year did not give the city’s basketball team much reason for financial optimism next season.

Chicago's "3rd airport" truly a saga of stupidity

When the Chicago Tribune ran “Gary as the ‘third airport’?,” as a headline this week, I couldn’t help but think for a moment that someone in government had a burst of common sense.

But then I read into the story and realized it was merely about how Gary-Chicago International Airport would like to someday have more passenger airlines use their facility, which currently provides an outlet for cargo being flown into the Chicago-area and next month will have daily passenger flights connecting Gary to Greensboro, N.C.

THE ROLE OF the Gary, Ind. airport in the development of a third major airport for the Chicago area (in fact, the whole process of trying to develop another airport to compliment O’Hare International and Midway airports) is a classic tale of the way our politicos like to work at their own pace and are more than willing to hold off on the public good if it tries to come too fast.

Political delays in developing a new airport are not unique, as certain issues are perennials. They are controversial topics that sound impressive and provide the raw material for newspaper banner headlines and breathless accounts of television newscasts that make it seem that a historic moment is about to take place.

The classic perennial issue is gambling, particularly the construction of a casino in Chicago proper (not Elgin or Aurora or Joliet or any of the northwest Indiana towns). As recently as last year, officials talked of creating a casino as a way of raising money to help raise needed money for mass transit in Chicago.

With some work, this airport could be the Chicago equivalent of Newark International. Photograph provided by Indiana Department of Transportation.

But it didn’t happen. It never does.

CASINO PROPOSALS OF many differing details were debated every single year I covered the Illinois General Assembly (1993-99) and have been discussed every year since I have moved beyond the Statehouse Scene. Actually, it wasn’t even a new issue when I covered it.

Despite all the rhetoric, NOTHING has ever happened that would result in shovels being turned in earth to dig up soil to lay a foundation for an actual casino in Chicago.

Similar to gambling, we’re also nowhere near getting a third airport for the Chicago area, even though the issue has been under review for three decades and reached a peak 17 years ago.

How long has this issue dragged on? Had action been taken back in 1991 when politicians were focused on it, we likely would now have an airport somewhere near Chicago to supplement the two airports that lie on the edge of the city limits.

COMING UP WITH an airport site has always been the problem, largely because politicos in Illinois and Indiana both want to ensure their state receives the economic benefits from its construction. Actual aviation needs of an airfield are irrelevant to many political people.

Back in the early 1990s (I covered mass transit for awhile for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago), a commission of officials from both states had narrowed the sites down to four. One was a major overhaul of what was then called Gary Regional Airport, which had a cute little terminal and one runway.

Chicago officials always acted as though the issue didn’t affect them because none of the sites were in Cook County – the others were near Peotone, Kankakee and a site east of Beecher, Ill., whose sole benefit was that the Illinois-Indiana state line cut through the middle of the proposed airport (making it the perfect political compromise).

But Mayor Richard M. Daley derailed the process by proposing an airport on the far Southeast Side of Chicago that would have obliterated neighborhoods like Hegewisch and suburbs like Burnham, and would have turned places like South Chicago and Calumet City into a southern equivalent of places like Park Ridge and Wood Dale – which get hit with constant O’Hare Airport overhead jet noise.

I STILL REMEMBER the day when the political people officially chose the Chicago site. It was pure politics. Indiana officials on the commission solidly favored a Gary airport expansion, while the one south suburban Cook County member picked the site near Peotone and commission member George Ryan (later to become governor) voted for the site near his home town of Kankakee.

All the others voted for Chicago, and it won, only to be derailed the following year when the Illinois General Assembly decided to play its own partisan games. Daley rescinded his offer, and most of the talk about new airports since then has focused on Peotone.

In recent years, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-Ill., has tried to lead development of a Peotone airport by saying it would benefit the economy of the entire south suburbs and far South Side of Chicago (which, not-coincidentally, is his congressional district).

But that puts him into a fight with Will County regional officials who want to see a Peotone-based airport as a local entity that cuts Chicago out of the equation altogether.

INSOFAR AS PEOTONE residents themselves are concerned, most of them do NOT want an airport near their homes. But they also see the political delays as evidence that things are so bungled up that nothing will happen anytime soon.

Meanwhile, Indiana officials continue to push for small-scale development of Gary-Chicago International out of hopes that future political mood swings could allow them to be ready to accommodate a future major expansion.

What I remember the most about the 1991 bi-state commission airport hearing was listening to Ryan when he said he could never, in good conscience, make any type of vote that would support putting a Chicago-area airport in Indiana.

That logic is so short sighted.

THE SITE AT the southern tip of Lake Michigan near steel mills make it ideal in that airport noise would affect steel workers (who might not hear it anyway due to the noise emanating from their jobs) and the fish that are able to survive in a portion of the lake that is tainted with steel mill waste.

Noise pollution for people would be minimal. Considering that I once lived under an O’Hare flight pattern (on Irving Park Road four blocks east of Cumberland Avenue), I appreciate first-hand how annoying constant jet noise can be.

A Gary airport expansion also would use land that already is contaminated and someday is going to have to undergo a serious environmental cleanup. Airport critics use that as an excuse to claim Gary is too expensive to build – ignoring the fact that the cost will have to be paid someday and likely will increase with the passage of time.

It might as well be now.

USING GARY AS a site for a new airport even fits in with the existing makeup of the Chicago area with O’Hare to the northwest, Midway to the southwest and Gary-Chicago at the far southeast corner of what can be called the Chicago area.

What is most disgusting about the “third airport” debate is that it is still going on. When it peaked in the early 1990s, studies said that if political people gave the needed approval for an airport site soon (perhaps by 1992), construction could start by decade’s end and the first flights could use the new airport sometime about 2002.

This airport should have been up and running by now. The fact that it isn’t is the ultimate evidence of political people ignoring the public needs.

It’s not like the overcrowded conditions at O’Hare International have alleviated. The only reason the airport is no longer the world’s busiest is because Hartsfield International Airport near Atlanta is busier – not because of a decrease in O’Hare flights.

SINCE MIDWAY IS already at its capacity (and was originally built back in the early days of aviation and was never really intended for modern-day aeronautic activity), it cannot pick up any of the O’Hare overload.

Chicago still needs a new airport.

Yet the political people who perennially discuss building casinos in Chicago also have dragged out talk of developing a new airport.

FOR WHAT IT’S worth, I believe the day will come when politicians finally approve a Chicago casino, and perhaps even a new airport. Political people eventually get around to action, as long as they sense that the people affected by the issue have waited their turn.

The perfect example of someone waiting their turn is the Chicago Bears. Back in the mid-1980s, the football team was just as insistent as the Chicago White Sox baseball team that it needed a new stadium.

The White Sox played power politics and threatened to leave Chicago, thereby forcing politicos to act in 1988. Don’t think for a moment that they have been forgiven.

CERTAIN POLITICAL PEOPLE who resent all government support for sports teams think of the White Sox in particular as “persona non grata” because they forced the Illinois General Assembly to act ahead of its snail-pace preference.

But had the Sox waited until Illinois lawmakers finally felt like doing something, they likely would have had to wait as long as the Bears, who did not get a major overhaul of their existing stadium until 2003.

At that rate, maybe we’ll see a new Chicago area airport some time by 2020. Let’s just hope the needs of Chicago aviation can hold out until then.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Gary-Chicago International Airport (which I once heard suggested should be called Chicago South Shore Airport) has an ideal location to be the third-major airport (http://www.garychicagoairport.com/) for the Chicago area. Of course, that means political people in Illinois refuse to take it seriously.