Results tagged “leasing”

City Hall is ending its month to month lease at a warehouse on South Pulaski that Mayor Daley's nephew, Robert Vanecko owned. Vanecko, you may remember, headed a real estate investment firm with Daley fundraiser Allison Davis. Davis and Vanecko got nearly $70 million in investment funding from five city pension funds. Both the city inspector general and federal prosecutors are investigating the deal, and Vanecko has since left the investment firm. Nevertheless, the city has determined that it no longer wants to be in the lease deal. But it's not because of the controversy. Certainly not.

Mayor Daley's beautification program has done wonders for downtown and tourism, but for Candy Basselen, who runs Springfield Supply, a steel fabrication company, Daley's love for wrought-iron fencing and fancy landscaping has cost her her business. That's because the city wouldn't grant her a new business license after she moved her business to a warehouse at 3348 S. Pulaski, the same warehouse owned by Daley's nephew, Robert Vanecko. And until the warehouse had sufficient amounts of wrought-iron fencing and pleasant landscaping, the city told her, the building wouldn't be up to code. And therefore she couldn't get a business license.

The ongoing city scandal over real estate and leases involving the mayor's nephew has drawn the ire of 31st Ward Alderman Ray Suarez. Reacting to the questionable month-to-month lease the Department of General Services established back in November of 2007, Suarez told the Sun-Times that he should have signed off on it. Suarez is chair of the City Council’s Committee on Housing and Real Estate.

As if the ongoing rift in the Daley family over mayoral nephew Robert Vanecko's connections weren't bad enough, the Bright One brings us more evidence of corruption in the mayor's family. According to records obtained by the Sun-Times, the city has been leasing property from clouted landlords, often at rental rates higher than market. Adding to the problems for the mayor is a warehouse at 3348 S. Pulaski that Vanecko and his business partners acquired, and which the city has paid more than $480,000 in rent over the past 15 months. The city uses that space to park dump trucks.