5th Monday Bonus Post – Lincoln Yards Update

This bloated project NEVER made any sense

You probably know that I hate Tax Increment Financing Districts. I have been investigating and educating around civic finance and TIFs since 2013 with the launch of the TIF Illumination Project (www.tifreports.com).

As you know, Chicago is plagued with TIFs and in 2023 there were 124 TIF districts in Chicago (over 30% of the city is TIF’d) and they removed over $1 billion in property taxes from serving the public and placed those public dollars in a massive slush fund controlled by the mayor. At the end of 2023 there was over $3 BILLION sitting in our TIF funds.

The TIF Illumination Project has no staff, budget, or office – and yet we have been called into community over 245 times and over 300,000 people have viewed our online presentations. Neighbors from 25 cities have asked for help to unravel and then fight TIF projects being pushed aggressively in their communities.

I have characterized TIFs as corrupting and racist and that they can’t be reformed and that they should be abolished. You can review the arguments at the site of our online petition.

The worst TIF that Chicago created has to be the one designed to subsidize the mega-project called Lincoln Yards. “Welcome to Lincoln Yards, a vibrant new development that will connect Chicagoans to over 50 acres of riverfront sitting between some of the city’s most iconic neighborhoods: Bucktown, Wicker Park and Lincoln Park. The development of Lincoln Yards presents a defining moment for Chicago to improve a vast, underutilized parcel of land to benefit residents, businesses and visitors.”

The developer was Sterling Bay, one of the most successful and wealthy developers in town. “What others deemed an aging warehouse in Chicago’s Fulton Market, a meatpacking district full of refrigerated buildings used to store chops, Sterling Bay’s CEO, Andy Gloor, saw as an opportunity to construct a creative office property and retail destination. He purchased the frozen warehouse with the goal of transforming it into the future home of Google’s Midwest HQ. The plan came to fruition and the building ultimately sold for 21 times its original price. Sterling Bay has since become a 150+ person company that develops award-winning urban headquarters for some of the world’s largest companies, including McDonald’s, Dyson, and BCG. Today, Sterling Bay has $20B of national real estate development in the pipeline.”

One of the Managing Principals of the company is Keating Crown. “Keating began his career at Tishman Speyer, where he was Senior Director of Development. He earned a BA from Duke University and a JD-MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and Pritzker School of Law. Keating serves as Chair of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company Board of Trustees and is on the 9/11 Memorial & Museum Board of Trustees. He is also on the board of directors for Crown Family Philanthropies, Lurie Children’s Hospital, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, and the Northwestern Memorial Foundation.” He is a grandson of Lester and Renee Crown, who are billionaires. Which makes him the great-grandson of Henry Crown, who co-founded Material Services Company which merged with General Dynamics in 1959. General Dynamics is a major U.S. defense contractor and (the 3^rd out of the top 100) and receives over 3% of America’s total defense spending. In 2024 the company took in $47.7 billion in revenue.

Sterling Bay went all out in 2018 to pull together this mega-project and subjected the North Side to relentless marketing, heavily staged community meetings, and nonstop City Hall and local media lobbying. The entire process was stage managed by Second Ward Alderman Brian Hopkins, whose very squiggly ward warped to the north and west from the Loop and included the proposed site of Lincoln Yards. A coincidence? I doubt it. The project seemed wildly bloated to me – calling for over 5,000 homes, dozens of high-end retails outlets, and a bewildering number of 880-foot tall skyscrapers along the Chicago River at Armitage Avenue. The original plans called for a soccer stadium and a major music venue, but those features were dropped.

I attended a number of these mandatory dog-and-pony show public meetings. I would say, in total, over 1,000 people attended and most seemed angry, full of objections and questions, and in no way agreeing to give the billionaire developers one penny of public subsidy. On December 11, 2018 the Community Development Commission heard public testimony before dutifully approving the proposed project and the attending TIF. Here are my remarks:

Good morning. My name is Tom Tresser and I’m the Lead Organizer for the TIF Illumination Project at www dot tif reports dot com. We have been exposing the hyper-local impacts of TIFs since 2013. We’ve been invited to present our findings at 74 public meetings across the city in front of over 6,400 people.

Here’s what we have found:

- TIFs are the secret sauce that has fueled the modern Democratic political machine in Chicago. Billions of public dollars have been funneled to wealthy developers who, in turn, funneled millions of political dollars into the campaign war chests of Mayor Richard M. Daley, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and their allies.

- TIFs are a never-ending source of local corruption as alderman after alderman accept campaign cash from developers who receive TIF dollars for projects in those aldermen’s wards – The proposed Cortland River TIF is just the latest example. The lawyers for the developers, Sterling Bay, have already given 2^nd Ward Alderman Brian Hopkins $6,000.

- TIFs raise property taxes on the people NOT in TIF districts – which now cover about 30% of Chicago.

- TIFs take money from vital public services – most notably our public schools. Since TIFs came to Chicago they have pulled over $7 BILLLION in property taxes off the table – that means our public schools were denied access to over $3.5 billion. There was no need to close 49 public schools, lay off thousands of CPS workers and cut programming and special education resources across the system.

- TIFs are regressive, anti-distributive and condemn our poorest communities to suffer blight and neglect – the OPPOSIITE effect of their supposed purpose. TIFs are flush in wealthy communities like the Loop, South Loop and West Loop and the hundreds of millions of property tax dollars swelling the coffers of those TIFs CAN NOT find their way to Englewood, Beverly, Lawndale or any place except where the mayor wishes those dollars to go – such as the three giant developments being considered by this body.

- Therefore, TIFs are racist and are part of Chicago’s shameful history of segregation, dis-investment, block busting and predatory lending done under the eyes of and with the help of our mayors and rubber stamp city councils.

I address the gallery and the general public today. The members of this commission are handpicked by the mayor and you have never shot down a TIF once it has come before you. No, my friends and neighbors – you must demand to any candidate seeking your vote next year that they pledge to FREEZE the TIF program.

#NoNewTIFs must be our rallying cry.

No new TIFs. Period. I call for a freeze on this corrupt and racist program. I call for an independent audit whose results are reported back to the people for our judgement. It’s OUR money and we are tired of you using our money to displace us, cheat us and giving it to your developer masters and future employers.

You have to remember that two of our most corrupt Alderman ran the two City Council committees overseeing the TIF process. Alderman Danny Solis was the longtime chair of the Zoning Committee and he stepped away when it was revealed that he had worn a wire for the FBI for two years to ensnare his colleagues in corrupt acts, and to avoid being prosecuted for his. Alderman Ed Burke has been on the City Council for 50 years and ran the Finance Committee like a personal fiefdom. Burke was convicted of 13 counts of racketeering, corruption, and extortion and is now in prison. In May of 2025 the Feds dismissed bribery charges against Solis in return for his undercover work and his testimony against Bruke and former Speaker of the Illinois House, Mike Madigan.

And yet Burke’s firm, Klafter & Burke was the real-estate lawyers for Sterling Bay and they dropped Burke only after his indictment in January of 2019! Despite protests and many unanswered questions, the City Council rushed to approve the Lincoln Yards TIF (along with one for Project 78 at Roosevelt Road and the Chicago River) which would dedicate $1.3 billion in public funds to subsidize the completion of the mega-project. That included $400 million in finance fees!

Here is how our public dollars were to be spent on behalf of the bloated Lincoln Yards mega-project:

Sterling Bay was to front the costs, then we would pay them back. This is a horrible case where a clouted billionaire-led firm totally takes over the planning and development function of a major city. If they want to build a megaproject in a place where there is inadequate infrastructure, then let them build it. By pushing their project to the front of the line, Sterling Bay commanded over $1.3 billion in public funding – including $400 million in finance fees to cover the cost of bonding and borrowing. That’s $400 million pure profit to Wall Street.

Meanwhile, other pressing infrastructure and planning needs of Black, Brown, and working class communities remain unmet. Most public schools have no nurses or librarians. We need massive work on replacing lead pipe water pipes. And, despite over 40 years of plans and promised, not one rivet has been driven to build a Red Line extension to the far south side.

In June of 2019 Hal Dardick, of the Chicago Tribune, reported that the developers had paid for a study lauding the project and presented to the public as if it had come from the city!

Key to the massive $1.3 billion taxpayer subsidy for Sterling Bay’s Lincoln Yards megadevelopment was a 36-page report declaring that the project met the requirements to get the money. As Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration promoted the record tax increment financing deal at a November 2018 public meeting inside a church, a planning official introduced the author of that report as “the city’s TIF consultant.” The consultant took the microphone and said the report was done “on behalf of the city of Chicago.” What the administration and consultant didn’t tell the crowd: Developer Sterling Bay had both picked the consultant and paid the firm. And that consultant also had been retained by a Sterling Bay subsidiary to lobby City Hall on the final terms of the Lincoln Yards agreement.

In August of 2019 Dardick, reported that the reason for the rush to approve the Lincoln Yards TIF. The Cook County Assessor’s upcoming re-valuation of the affected properties would’ve made the TIF designation impossible.

If Emanuel and Sterling Bay had waited much longer, the development no longer would have qualified for its record-high taxpayer subsidy, a Tribune analysis has found. To get the money, the area had to meet at least five state standards to be considered “blighted.” The city could then designate it as a tax increment financing district. At the time of the vote, the area met the bare minimum. Less than six weeks later, new property assessments were completed. The rising values of the Lincoln Yards land meant the TIF district no longer met one of the five standards, according to the Tribune analysis of the values of hundreds of parcels. “This certainly answers the question: What was the big hurry?” said 43rd Ward Ald. Michele Smith, who opposed the deal. “We were given no information to indicate that this was the big issue, that this was an issue about which we should have been concerned. None.

The project came under legal attack in 2019 from Grassroots Collaborative and Raise Your Hand. Despite all this, the megaproject trundled on and the TIF remained in place. Then COVID happened. Our shopping habits – already heavily using online channels – turned massively to Amazon and other web vendors. People got used to working from home. All across America the demand for office space dropped and empty retail store fronts exploded as old-line retailers failed. In light of all that, the bloated Lincoln Yards project made less and less financial sense.

After seeking to re-negotiate the TIF deal with the city and being turned down, the developers sought funding from, of all sources, the Chicago Teacher’s Pension Fund! Now Sterling Bay is out of the Lincoln Yard project altogether. On June 27, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a front-page story that filled three interior pages headlined “Lincoln Yards was supposed to transform the North Side. What went wrong?”

Someday, something will be done at the mostly fallow property at Lincoln Yards, the North Side repository for the best-waylaid plans in Chicago development. Land in the city is too coveted for Lincoln Yards to stay as it is. But the larger the site, the greater its complications. At 53 acres, Lincoln Yards has proven too much for the Sterling Bay development firm that stalked it for more than a decade. Sterling Bay, a savvy operation with backing from the billionaire Crown family, is losing the site to impatient lenders. And that has created an opening for Chicago’s JDL Development. Jim Letchinger, JDL’s chief executive officer, is close to deals for the property, sources have told the Chicago Sun-Times.

In one of life’s many civic ironies, the new master of Lincoln Yards is ANOTHER massively clouted and wealthy developer, JDL Development, owned by James D. Letchinger. The new developer is getting all this property for a relatively cheap price and is likely to scale back on the original plans. I have protested this company in the past, as well. They received $15.8 million in TIF subsides from the Clarendon/Montrose TIF in 2016 for a high end residential development on Montrose Avenue across the street from Lincoln Park!

How well I remember attending the public meeting at City Hall for that scam. I recall Mr. Letchinger testify as to why his project deserved so much public subsidies. It was because he could not get the rents he wanted and make the profits he wanted, so we, the taxpayers, had to chip in. No one challenged that absurd response – not the members of the Community Development Commission, the sitting Alderman (then James Cappleman) or then Chicago Planning Commissioner David Reifman.

I am happy that the bloated city-within-a-city project never materialized. I live in Lincoln Park and there are a few other wacky megaprojects on the books up here – including two connected to the proposed casino on the river at Chicago Avenue. All this development would’ve made living on the Near North side a nightmare. But mainly, I am happy that the taxpayers are temporarily off the hook for building out the stuff that the developer had placed in their project plan. We’ll have to see if the new owner resurrects the TIF plan and if he enjoys hundreds of millions of public dollars to subsidize his new plans for the site.

But let’s not gamble on that. It is time to cancel the Lincoln Yards TIF (formal name is Cortland and Chicago River TIF) and – indeed – the entire corrupt and racist TIF program. I am SO tired of billionaires stealing our public stuff.