Scoping Out the City's Downtown Spending Blowout

By Karl Klockars in News on Apr 24, 2009 7:20PM

If you can get past the staggering $15.5 Billion dollar figure in today's "Let's spend everything on the downtown area" story from the Tribune, you might get to exactly how terrifying things might get in the City. Worried about Block 37? Concerned about unnecessary Olympic-size spending? Bothered by a concentration on city-center construction in the face of the continued deterioration of Chicago's infrastructure? You'll love this.

You can read the entire shopping list on the Trib's site, but allow us to highlight a couple heart-stopping phrases:

"It reads like a lavish and bottomless wish list, but Chicago's $15.5 billion proposal to rejuvenate and expand transportation, parks and commercial space downtown is moving forward, despite uncertainties about the economy and whether the city will host the Olympics in seven years.

There has been relatively little public discussion about such a massive endeavor that is being launched in the heart of the city and that would have a lasting impact through the six-county region and the state."

And:

"The action plan calls for spending $1.5 billion for express trains to O'Hare International Airport and Midway Airport. The idea is being advanced even though it never resulted in a successful business model, rail service to both airports already exists and the CTA has indefinitely postponed further work on the skeleton of an airport "super station" in the Block 37 complex bounded by State, Dearborn, Washington and Randolph Streets."

If the lines "there has been relatively little public discussion about such a massive endeavor" and "the idea is being advanced even though it never resulted in a successful business model" jump out at you, congrats! You might be as cynical as most of us are about the whole deal.

Okay, so it's not all flowerpots and polish for the Loop and the Mag Mile. Continued modernization of the CTA is great - specifically along the Red Line - but how about some money spent on stops south of Sox/35th? Or north of Addison? The idea of additional stations on the Green Line and Pink Line is appealing as well, but there's also seems to be a lot of redundancy. More pedestrian bridges in Streeterville? Use the Columbus Avenue one. A Lakefront rail or bus service? Sounds like something that'll just get chopped in the next "doomsday" budgetary debacle. Maybe we're just being pessimistic and we should be looking at this as the fabled CTA super-buy in advance of a 2016 Olympics (or something to alleviate some holdover fears of the IOC).

But all this is from the city that chopped snowplowing this year, and toyed with the idea of outsourcing its pothole filling to a fried-chicken franchiser. We've done some quick math - a semi-serious short list of some things that $15.5 billion can buy. As always, feel free to supplement this list with additions of your own.

• A $5,535 check for every man, woman and child within city limits
• 81,578,947 Lollapalooza 3-day passes
• 673.9 Cloud Gates
• 6,200,000,000 hot dogs from Jimmy's Red Hots
• 387.5 Spire penthouses
• 59.6 Oprahs
• Enough to cover the payrolls of the Cubs and the Sox 67 times
• At a starting salary of $39k per year for rookie cops, 36,046 police officers for 10 years with no raise
• At an average starting salary of $53k for teachers, 29,245 teachers for 10 years with no raise