Condemn hospital: alderman
SOUTH SIDE | Preckwinkle wants to use Michael Reese site for Olympic Village
Chicago should condemn the Michael Reese Hospital campus to make way for a $1.1 billion Olympic Village and get around a property owner refusing to assume the rising cost of demolition and environmental cleanup, the local alderman said Wednesday.
"Condemn the property. Use the city's power of eminent domain. We should pursue the property with whatever means are at our disposal. ... I'm going to encourage the city to do that," said Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th), whose ward includes the Michael Reese site.
(Rich Hein/John H. White/Sun-Times)
"It'll take us longer to acquire the property. But we'll get it, and there'll be plenty of time to develop the site for the Olympics."
One day after the Chicago Sun-Times reported that City Hall had broken off talks with Medline Industries, owner of the Reese site, Mayor Daley held out hope of breaking the stalemate. In fact, he insisted the city was "still negotiating" with Medline.
Daley called the 37-acre hospital campus a "perfect site" for the Olympic Village because of its proximity to the lakefront and McCormick Place, and the opportunity to build sorely needed affordable housing on the Near South Side.
But Daley said he's not about to go forward with a transaction that puts Chicago taxpayers on the hook for demolition and environmental cleanup costs -- now pegged at $32 million -- that could climb even higher.
"It could be $30 million now and [ultimately] $60 million to clean up. ... You go down deeper ... it gets more complicated. Many times, they dump things that no one ever knew they dumped in there," Daley said.
If Medline refuses to blink, Chicago 2016 could either revive its original plan to build the Olympic Village on air rights over a truck staging area for McCormick Place or build it south of 31st Street on a massive parcel being developed by Draper & Kramer.