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Loop University - the nickname for a downtown Chicago area that 20,000 college students call home - would get decidedly safer, thanks to a mayoral crackdown proposed Wednesday.

One day after announcing his political retirement, Mayor Daley introduced an ordinance that would establish minimum security requirements for buildings with more than 50 units of student housing.

Those buildings would need to install security lighting, surveillance cameras at every door, lobby, stairwell and elevator and have around-the-clock security desks that distribute visitor badges and escort visitors to upstairs rooms. Exterior doors would need locking mechanisms that bar entry from the outside.

Buildings with 100 or more units would also be required to hire "licensed and insured" security personnel to patrol the premises 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Daily fines for each offense would range from $200 to $500.

With 23 colleges, universities and professional education schools, the Loop has become a campus unto itself with more than 65,000 students attending classes.

According to a recent report published by DePaul University, the downtown population of college students has surged by 25 percent over the last five years to the largest concentration of students in the nation.

But, unlike traditional colleges with concentrated dorms and campus police securing them, many downtown students live in privately-owned apartment buildings that have been converted to student housing. Their dorms look like any other residential building in the Loop.

"Many of 'em were just built. They were not intended to be student dormitories and now, they've changed into it. So, we have to put these extra measures in," Daley told reporters after introducing the ordinance at a City Council meeting.

Despite Daley's lame-duck status, the Council also approved the mayor's appointment of Jim Reynolds as Chicago Housing Authority chairman and a $1 billion bond issue to fund the next installment of his massive runway expansion project at O'Hare Airport.

The bonds will be primarily retired by airline ticket taxes and an infusion of federal funds. They were approved, despite continued opposition by United and American Airlines and aldermanic concerns that airport contractors are thumbing their noses at an ordinance requiring them to fill 50 percent of their jobs with Chicago residents.

Aviation Commissioner Rosemarie Andolino insisted that 43 percent of the jobs on 16 "closed out" O'Hare expansion contracts went to city residents, only seven percent short.

Finance Committee Chairman Edward M. Burke (14th) was skeptical about those figures.

Andolino didn't help her cause when she insisted that contractors had been fined for falling short, without putting a dollar figure on the penalties.

"I don't have that information with me," she said. "But, the city processes the liquidated damages. It goes to the corporate fund. And they use that for job training, which benefits city residents as well."

Aldermen also approved Daley's $98 million city subsidy to make way for "a new city" on the site of the old U.S. Steel South Works plant.