Who benefits from casino locations?

Chicago is finally going to be able to have a casino operating within the city limits, yet that doesn’t mean the politically partisan infighting is anywhere near to being complete.

Where, oh where, in Chicago will this become a reality?

Because Chicago is a big city. Now we get to fight about just where it ought to be located.

JUST ABOUT EVERYBODY is prepared to make an argument about how their neighborhood is the choice location that ought to provide Chicago with the potential economic benefits that a casino can create.

Of course, those arguments are going to be countered with quarrels about how putting a casino in somebody else’s neighborhood is a sure-fire way to ensure that a casino would fail to produce any benefits.

After all, nobody wants to go there!

We’re going to be hearing a lot of these arguments in coming months. Because while people will talk about city-wide benefits from gambling and a casino, they’re going to want to have the perks coming from their own neighborhood. Chicagoans aren’t really united enough to work together for our collective betterment.

WE’D JUST AS soon see each other get screwed over, if it means we can be the ones who come out on top.

That’s why I wonder if the debate over locating a casino will be as long and drawn-out as the fight has been over whether to let Chicago have a casino at all.

There are those who always argued the whole point of casinos was to provide economic benefits to isolated communities that can’t attract any other kind of economic development projects.

They’re the ones who took their opposition to a Chicago casino all the way down to last week’s Legislative vote that permitted the city to have gambling somewhere within their limits.

IT’S INTERESTING TO see Gov. J.B. Pritzker argue against putting a casino anywhere near downtown or the McCormick Place convention center. He said this week he wants a Chicago casino put out in one of the isolated neighborhoods that otherwise wouldn’t have any kind of attraction to draw people within their boundaries.

In short, he’s following the line of logic that Illinois originally had back when it placed casinos in places like East St. Louis or Metropolis.

Although there are other people who think that placing a casino downtown or near the convention centers is the way to ensure that large numbers of Chicago tourists have easy access to the place. Why place a casino at an isolated location where it would be difficult for anybody except for those who already live nearby to attend?

It’s the argument I’ve heard about developing a casino at a South Side location, particularly if we’re talking about the far Southeast Side 10^th Ward.

WHO’D MAKE THE trip to the East Side neighborhood if they weren’t already there. Although there are others who argue that the neighborhood’s proximity to the Illinois-Indiana border and the casinos that have cropped up in Hammond, East Chicago and Gary, Ind., would mean we’d be able to steal away business from Indiana.

In short, get people to quit venturing across the state line when they feel the urge to gamble. Stay in Illinois, and keep your losses here.

Of course, consider that other casinos would be permitted in the nearby south suburbs, Waukegan, Rockford, Danville and Williamson County in Southern Illinois. We’re bound to wind up putting casinos just about everywhere – making it all to easy for people to blow their money on games of chance.

Which could result in the notion of true economic development coming about from drawing real businesses to one’s community – instead of a chance at a job parking cars at the casino or keeping the casino’s buffet well-stocked. Because those are the kind of jobs most likely to be made available from a casino construction somewhere.

  -30-

Third Airport talk resurrected, but are we any closer to it actually being built

In the three-plus decades that I’ve covered news events in and around Chicago, there’s one story that seems to have lingered on beyond belief – a “third airport” for the metropolitan area.

Will this site ever become an airport?

It was a concept that was going through the process being planned and someday built, with the idea being that the first flights would be departing the new airport just prior to the beginning of 21^st Century – and would be expanded to full capacity probably about a decade ago.

THE LAST TIME I was out in the cornfields of Will County just south of Peotone, there was nothing resembling any of this having occurred. In fact, we’re really no closer now than we were back in the early 1990s to having another airport to relieve the congestion that exists at O’Hare International and Midway airports.

Which is why I find it humorous to learn that Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., signed off on a letter, along with Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, and several Congressmen, state legislators and mayors/village presidents from across the southern part of the Chicago area.

All of those political people are asking Gov. J.B. Pritzker to put $150 million in the next state budget to pay for improvements that would need to be made to the rural Will County site that has oft been considered for an airport.

Kelly tries to resurrect project … 

As in road repairs and utility connections leading to the site, along with an interchange on Interstate 57 that would make it possible for people to access the site – rather than whiz on by as they drive south to Kankakee or (a little further) Champaign-Urbana.

ALL OF WHICH is stuff that should have been decades ago if our officials were the least bit serious about developing a new airport for the Chicago area.

Instead, this is a project that has been perennially bogged down in partisan politics – with some people thinking that building any sort of project that would encourage economic development at the far south end of the Chicago area being a complete waste of time.

There’s nothing there, they argue. Why try to develop anything there?

… that Rauner tried to kill off for good

Of course, part of the problem is that supporters look at an airport project solely in terms of what can they gain from it. Not from any aviation perspective or whether it makes any sense to do an airport there.

IT’S ALMOST LIKE they’re following the logic of “Field of Dreams.” Remember? “It you build it, he will come.”

Although instead of the ghost of one-time White Sox superstar Joe Jackson, it would be jobs. And possibly the development of nearby towns such as Peotone, Beecher or Monee (with a combined population of 13,000) into municipalities of significance -- rather than rural burgs on the fringe of Chicago.

Whether that will happen remains to be seen.

Some think this site will be as under-utilized … 

For we went through four years of Bruce Rauner as governor, who always made it clear he didn’t want to be bothered with this project. Meaning that all the work former Gov. Pat Quinn tried to accomplish on the project was laid to waste.

NOT ALL THAT different from the ways that President Donald Trump has tried to undo anything and everything that had predecessor Barack Obama’s name attached to it. Would throwing money at the airport project enable it to return to life? Or has it lingered too long to survive?

The issue I wonder about is whether the need for a third airport for the Chicago area still exists the way it did back in the 1980s. As Kelly points out in her letter, United and American airlines coped with the crowded conditions of Chicago airports by moving their domestic hubs from O’Hare to airports in Denver and Dallas.

While O’Hare has dropped from the 12st busiest cargo airport to number 21. Maybe we could have kept these previous rankings if we had acted a few decades ago – instead of letting our partisan politicking take over.

… as the airport near Mascoutah

It may be too late, and we could be in danger of developing something along the lines of the MidAmerica St. Louis Airport in Mascoutah, Ill. – which for many years sat unused and got tabbed as the “Gateway to Nowhere.” I’m sure some are eager to tag similar label to any Peotone-related project.

  -30-

What’s going to kill Amazon.com chances? We can’t make up our minds

The more I think about it, the more I’m starting to believe that Amazon.com is likely to pick some place other than Chicago to be the site of the new second headquarters they want to build somewhere in the United States.

Could the Amazon.com logo become a part ...

As much as I think the Seattle-based Amazon types would be total lunkheads if they can’t appreciate how wonderful Chicago would be for their corporate needs, I also think we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves for the eventual failure.

FOR IT SEEMS that our political people who ultimately are going to have to put together some sort of package of incentives to entice Amazon.com types to come here are going to get undone by their own indecisiveness.

For it seems we can’t even agree on where we would want to have such a headquarters built – and the various interests who are each touting individual sites seem to think that “compromise” is defined as “Everybody else ought to shut up and do what we think is right!”

Within Chicago alone, there are supposedly six locations under consideration, and I’ve also heard from assorted interest groups who can easily tout locations that aren’t on the unofficial list of a half-dozen prospective sites.

I know that in my own home part of Chicago (the 10^th Ward, or southeast corner of the city), there are people who are getting all worked up that they think the knuckleheads at City Hall aren’t united by trying to entice Amazon.com with the site of the old U.S. Steel South Works plant along Lake Michigan.

THAT’S THE SITE where many developers have talked about trying to develop upscale neighborhoods taking advantage of the lake’s proximity. Although I suspect many of those city officials trying to put together a Chicago proposal want a location more potentially upscale than something at 79^th Street and the lakefront.

... of Chicago cityscape like Walgreen's?

Their idea of a waterfront site for Amazon.com usually talks about the Chicago River, specifically the north branch. Where there are some architectural drawings in existence that show an artistically-spectacular structure that could be erected for Amazon.com.

Or others talk about turning the Old Post Office building in the South Loop into a headquarters – citing how it is historically significant, would be a nice re-use and also would be within walking distance of other prominent downtown Chicago structures and businesses.

Some even speculate about a suburban site, such as the Oak Brook location where McDonald's used to have its 'Hamburger U' where it trained franchise managers. We can't even get our own thoughts together united behind a proposal. Which makes me wonder if the Amazon.com types will just write us off altogether.

YET IT’S NOT just the city trying to get itself involved in the Amazon.com battle.

Gov. Bruce Rauner admits Illinois will be working with St. Louis officials who are trying to entice Amazon.com to come to their city. Rauner figures that it would benefit the Illinois residents of Madison and St. Clair counties (which are this state’s portion of the St. Louis metropolitan area) if the plant were to be located there.

Could Kankakee or Gary, Ind., ...

Yet that may not be the only Illinois alternate interest.

The Capitol Fax newsletter reported this week that Kankakee County officials are trying to persuade Rauner to include their area in any state proposal to try to get Amazon.com to come to Illinois.

A KANKAKEE-AREA based facility would have proximity to the far south end of the Chicago area, while also being not that far from the University of Illinois campus in Urbana.

Then, there’s also the potential political battle evolving just over the state line in Indiana, where Lake County business officials are trying to put together a proposal to try to entice Amazon.com to locate in the Hoosier state, while Gary, Ind., city officials are putting together their own proposal – one that they advertised earlier this week in the New York Times.

... bring Amazon.com into proximity of Chicago?

Both of those groups are claiming their proximity to Chicago means Amazon.com could get the Chicago-area labor without having to actually locate in Chicago.

That’s a lot of confusion, and there’s always the chance of more groups trying to tout themselves between now and Oct. 25 – the date that Amazon.com supposedly wants to have proposals submitted by. Enough confusion that the Seattle types could easily wind up deciding that the New York Times was right in recommending Denver as the best site.

  -30-

With TPP, Trump pleasing some; mostly those who were already satisfied

TRUMP: First Asia, next Mexico?

I have heard from countless labor union locals who, in recent months, have been pushing a campaign to urge local governments across the nation to pass resolutions condemning the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

That is a trade agreement between the nations of North America and Asia, and its pursuit was something strongly desired by now-former President Barack Obama.

SO NATURALLY, THE knee-jerk reaction of President Donald J. Trump is to want to do away with it.

And considering that this was a deal that had not yet been ratified by Congress (which was the point of all those local resolutions – to urge Congress not to support this), it was an easy move for Trump to be negative on.

Unlike the Affordable Care Act which will take significant legal steps in order to back away from because it was approved by Congress and signed into law by a president, this merely took a presidential signature on a document. Which is action he took on Monday.

Now it seems the Trans-Pacific Partnership does not include the United States, which is a major step toward causing it to wither away into irrelevance. It will become the historic similarity to the old League of Nations, which U.S. officials pushed for in the days following the end of the first World War to try to maintain peace, but then never formally joined because of the dominance of the isolationists who prevailed in this country.

NO ONE REALLY knows what will happen in coming years with regards to trade between North American and Asian nations. The agreement was meant to erase many of the issues that complicate business dealings – which often come from people who want their parochial concerns placed above all else.

OBAMA: All his accomplishments must go!

Which includes many of the labor unions that fear these trade deals are meant to further encourage the transition of physical labor jobs to countries where physical labor works cheap.

I get that labor unions are out to preserve existing jobs for their members. But I’ll have to admit to having always thought of the general concept of the TPP as being a sound one – we ought to be working together for our mutual benefits.

Now, it seems that Trump has followed through on his “Make America Great Again” pledge as being the equivalent of turning back time – literally trying to revert back to a sense of isolationism that will wind up dragging our nation into the gutter of the world’s society.

WHILE ALSO UNDERMINING our nation’s ability to assert its authority over the world. Asserting oneself also means making some sacrifices for the benefit of the global economy.

Will Bill Clinton get full NAFTA blame?

I’m sure the labor unions that were fighting the TPP are now pleased with Trump,

Of course, now they’ll move forward to a similar cause – the North American Free Trade Agreement that says Canada, Mexico and the United States work together as one entity on trade policy.

NAFTA has long been an opposition cause of the same labor officials, who resent that former President Bill Clinton approved it into law (stealing the idea from previous President George H.W. Bush who was unable to get it approved during his presidency). Which means revoking it will entail complicated talks almost as detailed as the mess it will take to erase the Obama healthcare reform initiatives that the people want – BUT the ideologues do not.

SO NATURALLY, TRUMP has already begun his efforts there – although there’s no saying how long it will take before anything can be accomplished. For what it’s worth, NAFTA revocation under Trump is likely to focus on the same xenophobic sentiments that Trump-backers express whenever Mexico is the subject of conversation, and Bloomberg News reported that Canada officials are largely focusing their efforts at trying to stay out of the crossfire likely to occur.

Will George Bush share NAFTA blame?

Dump NAFTA and “Build that Wall!!!” are likely to be the simple-minded slogans tossed about by Trump-ites with regards to U.S./Mexico foreign policy. One who tries thinking logically about this might wonder if it winds up hurting Trump with the growing Latino population that might take this cheap rhetoric as evidence they’re being singled out for Trump abuse.

Which, my guess, is something he doesn’t care about. Consider the Washington Post reported that Trump said some 3-5 million people who shouldn’t have been able to vote in last year’s elections did so against him. Meaning in his “alternate facts” mentality, he really won the popular vote.

Meaning he probably thinks becoming “President Xenophobe” will gain him politically. And yes, I strongly suspect that Trump himself would have to have the meaning of that label explained to him by one of his aides who, in his mind, spent too much time with “book-learnin’” and not enough using his methods of chasing girls.

  -30-

Mitsubishi typical of corporate attitude; should we really cater to it too much?

It has been some three decades since I attended college in Bloomington, Ill., and the major local news story during the time I lived there was the arrival of an auto plant in neighboring Normal by Mitsubishi Motors.

A road sign soon to be obsolete

The coming of a U.S.-based auto plant by a Japanese company was a major event for that city – it supposedly put that central Illinois municipality on the international map. Unless you believe that Illinois State University has such a stellar reputation.

SO THE FACT that Mitsubishi officials let it be known recently that they’re closing that plant – and that the whole saga of Mitsubishi in central Illinois lasted all of 30 years tops – is a major blow to that community.

Yet somehow it doesn’t seem all that shocking that such a thing can happen.

Mitsubishi came to this state when it thought it could gain some sort of economic benefit for itself. The fact that it now no longer senses that benefit and thinks it can gain by going elsewhere is, in many ways, the way business operates.

Which is why I think it is ridiculous for government officials of a certain ideological bent to claim they’re being “pro-business” by conducting themselves in ways that are meant to cater to the whims of what corporate interests want.

WE’RE NOT GOING to get companies locating here with any particular loyalty by making these payoffs – which often involve giving assorted tax breaks to the companies to make them feel like the gross income they’re producing is theirs.

Mitsubishi made a fine auto in Illinois for 30 years

The activist-types who complain about this are often derided as being unrealistic, if not outright naïve. It also is argued that any loss of tax revenue by the local governments is made up for by the fact that the company employed people locally and helped boost the local economy.

The money they were paid in salaries got spent at local supermarkets and shopping malls and was used to make mortgage payments on local homes. Would the local community have been better off if those jobs hadn’t existed in the first place?

Now what makes me bring any of this up?

PART OF IT is the fact that I remember the local fanfare when Mitsubishi came to Illinois. One of the first vehicles off that assembly line, I seem to recall, was provided to then-Gov. James R. Thompson.

RAUNER: Will reforms result in more Mitsubishis

Heck, I remember buying a Mitsubishi vehicle (a Galant, to be exact) back during the 1990s stint that I lived in Springfield, Ill. I remember it as one of the best automobiles I ever owned.

But if we’re being totally honest about things, the fact that Mitsubishi is moving on is something that should have been expected. It may well be the “American Way” to look for a better deal elsewhere.

Which is why I find a lot of Gov. Bruce Rauner’s rhetoric about wanting to implement “reforms” to benefit business interests to be a step in the wrong direction.

DO WE REALLY want to give future Mitsubishis an excuse to come to Illinois for a time – only to move on when they come up with someone willing to make them a “better” offer in the future?

I’m more inclined to think that reform is about creating new business – not playing an endless game of getting existing business to move about and play musical chairs with the Great Lakes states. Leaving the workers without the representation that ultimately will look out for their rights when there is business conflict.

The companies we ought to be encouraging are going to be the ones that come here because they see great benefit to being physically located in our state and think they can create something rather unique here.

Otherwise, the Mitsubishi story of a company coming here for a few decades before moving on and leaving us empty shells of what once was will become all-too-common across Illinois; and that would be truly pathetic.

  -30-

Illiana demise ought not be a surprise. Will Will County airport be next?

I fully expect that anything former Gov. Pat Quinn publicly supported, current Gov. Bruce Rauner is going to oppose. They’re like a pair of temperamental 8-year-olds.

So I wasn’t shocked to learn that Rauner’s first actions included putting a halt to any planning for interstate construction. That includes the proposed Illiana Expressway that Quinn always touted any time he was on the South Side or surrounding suburbs.

BECAUSE THERE, LOCAL officials perceive construction of an interstate highway stretching from Interstate 65 near Lowell, Ind., to Interstate 55 near Wilmington (which is just south of Joliet) as being a source of jobs and a way to spur future economic development south of the city.

Bringing up Illiana, along with construction of a new airport in the farm fields of rural Will County north of Peotone, was always a way for Quinn to get cheers and applause – along with votes.

If all of Illinois had voted like the South Side and south suburbs, Quinn would have kicked Rauner’s behind back on Election Day last year.

But they didn’t, and Quinn didn’t. We have “Gov. Rauner” now, and he said during the campaign he doesn’t think much of the Illiana project (and the third airport, either).

SO NOW, ILLINOIS is doing a financial review. Rauner aides say it’s about fiscal responsibility and making sure money is not being wasted during construction.

Although I suspect it’s also about not expending too much state effort on parts of the state that weren’t all that supportive of the Rauner campaign during the election cycle. Seriously, some of those suburbs in Thornton and Bloom townships gave up to 90 percent of their voter support to Quinn.

So this is a political move all too similar to the way past politicos have operated. Not exactly conduct becoming of someone who claims to be the “nobody” that “nobody sent.”

Although since Rauner was clear during the campaign cycle that he didn’t support Illiana, I don’t think we have much of a right to be shocked and appalled that he would make its demise one of his first actions.

EVEN THOUGH THAT demise now leaves unanswered a very serious question – what will be done to alleviate the congested mess that occurs all too frequently on Interstate 80 just south of Chicago proper?

That road is heavily used by truckers shipping goods from other parts of the country into Chicago. Anyone who has ever driven on the interstate near the Illinois/Indiana border knows how nerve-wracking it can be to get caught up in a truck-laced traffic jam.

One of the purposes of the Illiana proposal is to give those freight trucks that are merely passing through metro Chicago (and not specifically stopping here) an alternate route to alleviate the Interstate 80 traffic.

Now that Rauner is moving in ways to obliterate the Illiana (although Indiana state officials say they’re prepared to build their portion of the road regardless of Illinois’ problems with the project), it will be interesting to see how the new governor addresses the traffic congestion problem.

BECAUSE THE ISSUE is not going away. It is a serious one. It is not something Rauner can ignore. If he does, he will be messing with the transportation of goods into and out of the Chicago area, which impacts the state’s economic bottom line!

 I’d like to think Rauner knows better. Although the idea of a politician causing problems inadvertently because of their desire to oppose something or someone (Quinn??!?) else is nothing new in Illinois.

It is likely the third airport concept could meet a similar fate, although that is a Federal Aviation Administration project and the federal government has final say over whether it proceeds.

But federal officials have said before they want local support for the airport project, which means Rauner apathy could cause them to lose good will – and the southern part of metro Chicago could wind up losing its two major projects meant to bolster the local economy.

  -30-

Are casino “promises” causing suburbs to hold off on serious development?

Every time I pass the northeast corner of Cicero Avenue and 175^th Street in suburban Country Club Hills (I have family that lives nearby), I can’t help but shake my head at the vast expanse of land that exists there.

Will people gamble their way into the red at this site?

That site has a large-scale strip mall that could grow into a shopping mall to its north, and Interstate 80 to the east. It is large enough that local officials say they’re saving it for the casino they want to develop.

THE ONE THAT would be the “south suburban” casino in the grand scheme of things by which Illinois state government ups the number of casinos operating in the state from 10 to 15.

Much of the attention on this issue has gone to the fact that one of the extra casinos would be placed in Chicago, and over whether a Chicago-based casino should be controlled by a city government agency (as in one whose director is picked by Mayor Rahm Emanuel) rather than the Illinois Gaming Board that oversees all other casinos in Illinois.

At times, the idea of a south suburban casino seems like an afterthought.

Yet when I think of the concept, I can’t help but notice the number of communities that are basing their economic future on the idea of something that isn’t currently permitted under state law!

IT MAKES ME wonder how many legitimate development opportunities are being passed on (or not even being contemplated) because everyone is banking their future on the idea of getting a casino.

Made worse by the fact that, at best, ONE community will get the dream. While some half-dozen proposals (at least, more may develop as time passes) are being considered.

There are going to be a lot of losers.

What happens to those communities who, years from now, have nothing to show for their casino dreams other than vacant land plots? Such as that one on Cicero Avenue?

PERSONALLY, I DON’T think much of the whole casino concept. I always thought of them as being for communities that were incapable of getting anything else to locate within their boundaries.

Which makes me wonder if places like Country Club Hills or Homewood (my father and step-mother, who enjoy the casino atmosphere and live just a few minutes from the proposed sites on Cicero Avenue or Halsted Street), or others like Ford Heights, Calumet City or Lynwood (which would like to put a casino right on the Illinois/Indiana border) have any kind of back-up plan?

I have heard from various municipal officials whose complaints about casinos focus on state government for taking so ridiculously long (how many years has it been now?) to make a decision.

Because they feel it puts them on hold. They can’t possibly contemplate real economic development – something that creates jobs better than being a coat-room clerk or a valet parking attendant.

AS FOR THOSE who want to argue the merits of being a black-jack dealer, I don’t really want to hear it. There are higher aspirations in life than dealing cards, and I always wonder about a community that is willing to settle for less.

Because that’s what the whole casino campaign amounts to – communities putting bets on their future in hopes that they’ll strike it rich. When anybody with sense knows that the “house” always wins! As in the casino itself.

Everybody else ultimately comes out the loser. Sometimes, I think these suburban mayors would be better off buying a Mega Millions lottery game ticket.

With all the technicalities and legalese and complications in the process of the state creating a casino, I wonder if the odds are better that they’ll win the big jackpot – as opposed to someday getting a casino.

  -30-

EXTRA: A present for everybody! Or, Christmas comes to Ill. 5 months early

To Gov. Pat Quinn, his big accomplishment was in giving approval to a measure that will allow Illinois government to move forward in developing the long-discussed new airport near rural Peotone.

The Statehouse? Or Santa's workshop?

Which is true enough.

BUT I’M SURE there are others who are going to want to ignore the airport process.

They’re going to view it as the day the state kicked in some money for construction of a new arena near the McCormick Place convention center – the arena that is meant to be the new distant-from-campus home of the DePaul Blue Demons basketball programs.

Others will want to view Thursdays’ action as the permitting of fertilizer plants in Tuscola (not far from Champaign) to be eligible for job-creation incentives. And some will prefer to see this as the bill that helps develop the Mississippi River’s Port of East St. Louis.

For the bill that Quinn signed into law during morning ceremonies at Governors State University was the ultimate in “Christmas tree” bills – so-named by Springpatch denizens because they provide a little something for everybody.

IT WAS A bill that got its final approval from the General Assembly on the final day of the legislative session back in May. Back when everybody else was preoccupied by the passage of a concealed carry measure – and the failure of the Illinois House to do anything with legitimizing gay marriage.

It was a bill that most people managed to miss in the last-minute swath of legislation that did get voted on!

Christmas comes 5 months early

And it is a bill that will now have the potential to irritate so many different interests – from the people who hate the idea of a new Chicago-area airport being built on farmland to those who think it’s a dumpy idea to build a new basketball arena on the Sout’ Side when the school that would play there is up north.

Although at least this particular bill has issues that all sort of relate to construction or economic development – even if you believe that development is a mere fantasy.

IT’S NOWHERE NEAR as much of a mish-mash as a measure the Legislature approved in the mid-1990s to alter the state’s Leaking Underground Storage Tank fund AND implement measures for registering people convicted of sex crimes.

Legislators argued that both measures related to “public safety.” Although the tacky jokes about sex offenders and the “LUST Fund” being combined into one bill did nothing except create tacky puns that still make me groan some two decades later!

  -30-

South suburbs have changed, and people should change their perception w/ it

It has been an intriguing six-day period for the suburban area south of Chicago.

QUINN: Is his talk cheap?



Gov. Pat Quinn has actually deemed the area that is an extension of Chicago’s great Sout’ Side worthy of his attention three times in the past few days.

ONCE WAS TO see that the old Dixie Square shopping center in Harvey was really being torn town, a second time in Hazel Crest to use a local school to announce a series of school-related projects the state would pay for, and a third time on Monday to be present for the unveiling of the new Tuskegee Airmen Memorial Trail signs that will be erected on Tuesday along the Cook County portion of I-57.

Quinn even seems to have some set rhetoric that he uses whenever he is in the municipalities that developed south of  95^th Street (or 119^th Street, or 138^th Street, whichever one you consider to be the southern “end” of Chicago) to make it sound like he cares about the area.

“If you put the south suburbs together, you would have one of the largest cities in America,” Quinn has said – which is sort of true. Depending on how one defines “south suburb” (as opposed to southwest suburb, west suburb, northwest or north suburb), the area can have about 500,000 people – which is almost the size of Milwaukee).

But, of course, nobody puts all those municipalities of 10,000 to 35,000 people each into one cohesive unit. Plus, the same fact could easily be said of the west suburbs or north suburbs.

THEY WOULD MAKE significant cities if they were considered as semi-entities, instead of individual communities -- certainly larger than anything found in "downstate" Illinois.

So I’m not convinced that the sudden surge of attention from Quinn and the state is going to change much of anything about the region – which I will admit I have a special interest in because I have lived there.

Much of my own life has been spent moving back and forth between city and suburb (with the occasional move outside the Chicago area to a politically-motivated community such as Springfield, Ill., or Washington, D.C.).

What makes the south suburbs stand out when it comes to suburbia is the fact that they truly are an off-shoot of Chicago’s South Side – which in recent decades developed neighborhoods that are almost entirely African-American.

SO DURING THE past decade when many of those African-American city residents became tired of city life and decided to move elsewhere, it may be true that some decided to go back “down South” (ie., Atlanta).

But many of those roughly 180,000 African-Americans who left Chicago in the past decade (according to the Census Bureau population count completed last year) are now living in those south suburbs.

Many communities in the south suburbs have developed majority African-American populations. The south suburbs is now just as important a region for black political empowerment as any Chicago South Side or West Side neighborhood.

Which is what causes many people to be scared off of taking the area seriously when it comes to economic development.

IT LEADS TO the very real conditions that Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-Ill., likes to talk about when he gives speeches. Invariably, he will talk about how the Bishop Ford Freeway is a messy traffic jam headed northbound during the morning rush hour, but that the southbound lanes are ever so empty.

Everybody feels the need to leave the southern area (and for that matter, the far South Side of Chicago proper) in order to gain any kind of significant employment.

Because of my own ties to the area, it is why I personally am rooting for people like Jackson whenever they talk about initiatives that might actually draw positive attention to the area (such as his plans to turn the area around 111^th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue into a national park honoring the old legacy of the Pullman railroad cars that once were built there).

Anybody who ever has been to that area would realize it still has such a historic feel to it that it could be an attraction – just as the few blocks surrounding what once was Abraham Lincoln’s home in Springfield, Ill., has become.

UNLESS PEOPLE LET their racial hang-ups get the best of them. That could be the biggest impediment to anything serious being done in the way of development for the area.

Will they become a tribute, or a barrier?



Which is why I am curious to see how the renaming of I-57 from 99^th Street down to Sauk Trail near suburban Matteson plays out in the public eye. Lots of people on Monday used ceremonies in suburban Markham to make grandiose statements. But will them mean them?

Or will there be a predominance of people who will take the fact that the one-time Calumet Expressway is now the Bishop Ford Freeway (named for long-time Church of God in Christ presiding bishop L.H. Ford) and that I-57 is now named for the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II fame and interpret that to mean that these two African-American tributes now establish eastern and western boundaries for black suburbia that they go out of their way to ignore?

If that were to happen, that would be the blow most likely to harm us as a society.

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We’ll sweat it out this summer while pols figure out what to do with casinos

In all honesty, I’m not giving the proposed expansion of casinos in Illinois much thought these days. I'll think about it come October.

The General Assembly may have approved a bill calling for significant expansion – 5 more, including the long-desired casino in Chicago. But nothing is ever going to become of that bill.

IT’S ALMOST RIDICULOUS to pay it any mind. Whatever does happen, if anything, to add to the number of casinos across the state is going to be what is being negotiated in private by the political people of our state.

In all likelihood, the bill now on hold by the Illinois Senate (even though it has full legislative approval) will never be considered by Gov. Pat Quinn.

The legislators themselves are saying they fully expect to have to reconsider this issue when they return to the Statehouse in October for the fall veto session.

When that happens, whatever compromise that has been worked out will have to be voted on, and a lot of legislators who begrudglingly voted for this in May are going to wind up hating it in October. It will be so radically different.

QUINN JUST ABOUT confirmed that sentiment. Using his appearance this week in the East Side neighborhood to approve that coal-to-natural gas plant, the governor said he won’t be pressured into signing something into law that he despises.

Calling himself a “goalie for the public good,” Quinn said he is continuing to talk to all sides of this particular issue. Changes will be made in this bill before he ever gets around to addressing it.

Which is what makes me think this effort is doomed.

Because I’m sure that many of the things that will wind up getting stripped out of any casino expansion plan were the very things that persuaded many legislators to vote for it in the first place.

MANY OF US think of this as the bill that finally allows the city proper to have a casino – one that would be on a larger and grander scale than any of the existing casinos in Illinois; which started out their lives as riverboats offering cruises of the waterways with a little bit of gambling taking place on board (with nobody being shocked, shocked!).

But for everybody who considered a Chicago casino to be a priority, there is an equal number of legislators to whom keeping a casino out of Chicago was just as important.

Why would any city resident venture to Joliet, Aurora or Elgin (or even Des Plaines) if they can find something more impressive in Chicago proper? Officials representing the other casino communities would rather not have the competition.

And some people just vote “no” anytime the name Chicago comes up.

WHICH IS WHY this bill became so overbloated. So many things had to be added on so that those people could claim to their constituents that they got something, in exchange for letting Chicago have the casino whose idea has been around for so long that Jim Edgar used to be the big obstacle to its being built.

Now, it’s greed.

There are those who want to think of this as the Rockford-area casino bill. Or the Park City casino (between Waukegan and Gurnee near the Illinois/Wisconsin border). Or perhaps the unspecified south suburban casino bill.

There are even those who merely want to think of this as the bill that will let slot machines be set up at the racetrack at the Illinois State Fairgrounds in Springfield.

TAKE AWAY ANY of those things, and the amount of support for this dwindles. I’ve even heard from a few legislators who say they’re inclined to vote “no” if this issue comes up again just because the talks have become so complex and convoluted that it is difficult for them to follow what is, and isn’t, still in the bill.

That is why Quinn throws out strong hints that he hates this bill, but won’t come out and just use the “v” word. Talking “veto” now would diminish this issue’s chances of ever becoming reality.

Which might very well please the people at the Illinois Gaming Board, who oversee the 10 existing casinos and hate the way this expansion is being considered.

While there is a strong sense that what really bothers them is that they were not consulted during the bill’s crafting process, one cannot ignore board Chairman Aaron Jaffe, who previously called the bill “garbage” and is now telling WBEZ-FM how corruption and organized crime involvement in Illinois casinos would develop with the bill as currently written.

IT MAY BE true. But Jaffe also says that he is bothered by the fact that this bill was one of the last actions of the General Assembly before they adjourned for the summer.

“They passed it on the last day. Nobody knew what was in it,” Jaffe told the radio station.

Unfortunately, that argument won’t make much of a dent in the process. Because so much legislation gets passed at the last minute that Quinn would have to use his “veto” power to reject anything – if that were the going standard for propriety.

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