Finkl Follow-up Fever

By Sean Corbett in News on Dec 21, 2006 2:40PM

Two weeks ago we found out the Finkl steel plant is moving out of its Lincoln Park home. This week the debate over what to do with the 200,000 square feet of real estate is heating up. The site sits in what was the first planned manufacturing district (PMD) in Chicago, an area where residential construction is prohibited and retail activity limited. Considering recent trends in housing and transportation, PMDs make lots of sense. The City That Works would be in bad shape if all the manufacturing jobs moved out to the suburbs; diversity of businesses is a good thing — longer commutes, not so good.

Developers say, “But building houses on the land would generate millions in taxes for the city!!” Here we were, all along, thinking the people at city hall were there to keep our city safe and clean and nice … so they are really there to figure out how to get the most tax revenue out of the small parcel of land over which they preside? That clears things up a bit. Thanks, developers!

If Chicagoist sees another large-scale condo development with acres of the same ugly concrete block houses replace the plant, we will collectively retch. After that though, we’ll probably look into buying some property in the area so we can flip it for a buck.

Apparently Finkl’s webmaster forgot to update finkl.com since they bought a plant in Quebec in 2004:

"Since the 1800s, Finkl has maintained a commitment to manufacture 100 percent of its products in Chicago.”

B L O C K S by rickabbo.