by Gerry Shacter

Created on: April 25, 2008   Last Updated: April 06, 2012

From a story appearing in the Chicago Tribune (3/5/2008, 'Authority assessing face-lift of Wrigley'), I see that former Illinois Governor Jim Thompson is now pitching for the Chicago Cubs. He is the chief of something called the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority which proposes to buy and rehabilitate (repair) what is now a private company's decrepit baseball playground, Wrigley Field.

You say, Governor, that it can be done with no additional tax burden. But I notice that you don't say, at least as far as the story goes, that there won't be any additional risk to the tax payer down the road. For example, will you perhaps be peddling the bonds you are proposing to investment funds that house Illinois pension money, putting such pension money, and the money of taxpayers who might ultimately have to bailout the pension savings at risk?

You also propose to fund the purchase of Wrigley Field with a special taxing district around the Wrigley neighborhood, whose future growth in sales taxes over the next 30 years would help to pay for the deal. If that's not new taxes being used to pay for the stadium, then what is! Governor, the article quotes you as saying the deal is at no cost (to the public). Yet aren't additional taxes applied to the stadium neighborhood the same as taxes? Isn't that taking public money and applying it to the park? And what if this future sales growth doesn't materialize, or there are unforeseen ballpark related expenses. Who's going to foot the bill then?

The devil is in the details, and as long as you paint this big, broad-brush picture and we don't think too hard about the money to be made by the politically savvy folks who get to do the bond and building business, then the bailout of Wrigley sounds quite on the up and up, almost like it wasn't in the cards from the beginning.

It's funny how things work in the State of Illinois. If I want to buy a house, I make sure it's in good shape before I put my money down. You want to buy a house governor; you buy it first and then fix it up. I guess that makes sense if you will be getting it at a fixer-upper price. But the hundreds of millions I am hearing about don't sound like fixer-upper prices. You are also quoted as saying its 'the most iconic baseball field in America'. Yet at the same time you are reported as suggesting that the city relax the ballpark's landmark status for flexibility in renovation. So I guess Wrigley is an icon but not so much of one that you want to be constrained in its redesign. I guess its an icon that needs makeup, and lots of it. A baseball icon that needs makeup to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars is an icon ready for the wrecking ball. Do you know what it will look like when you are done, governor? It will look like a great deal for anyone connected to the deal, those who make their money before the bills come due.

Governor, you will not get this deal done without risking public money. The Cubs are a private company, and Wrigley field is not the Field Museum or the Art Institute. It's a privately owned structure along Addison Avenue in a neighborhood, among many other gentrified neighborhoods, that have been turned into either theme parks for the young residing in overpriced walk-up closets or into characterless high-rise retirement condos whose residents share their buildings with their cars.

Wrigley Field is not a shrine. If it needs work, let the company that owns it fix it, or raze it. Nothing with the name Illinois in it should own it or finance it, directly or otherwise.

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