Alderman blasts city's Olympic Village plan
Says local pols left in the dark on choice of site
Mayor Daley's Olympic planners were accused Wednesday of running roughshod over elected officials -- by keeping their glitzy plans secret, then giving sneak peeks to the media without consulting local politicians.
Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th) said she got only a few hours' warning before Daley shifted the Olympic stadium to Washington Park, which is partially in her ward. And she was left in the dark about the proposed $1.1 billion Olympic Village, which would be in her ward.
Preckwinkle is the second alderman in a week to question the mayor's plan to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Last week, Ald. Ed Smith (28th) threatened to embarrass Chicago with the U.S. Olympic Committee if an Olympic-size pool wasn't included in plans for a new Westinghouse High School.
"They haven't bothered to talk to me . . . I find this really offensive and disrespectful of local elected officials. But this is the way they operate," Preckwinkle said.
Had Preckwinkle been asked for her opinion, she would have suggested that the 5,000 units of market-rate and affordable housing and 1,000 hotel rooms be built on land for sale to the west on the campus of Michael Reese Hospital, not on lakefront air rights over a truck staging area for McCormick Place as called for in the plan. "It's easier to build on the ground than it is to build the physical infrastructure you need to build housing above. It would be less expensive," she said.
Chicago 2016 spokesman Patrick Sandusky said the McCormick Place site was chosen for the "spectacular new lakefront community" it would create.