With time running out on his mayoral reign, Rahm Emanuel moved Wednesday to lock in two building blocks of his development legacy: the $6 billion Lincoln Yards development and construction of a $95 million police and fire training academy in West Garfield Park.
For more than a year now, Black Lives Matter and other young people who have organized under the #NoCopAcademy label have made the $95 million police academy, planned for vacant land at 4301 W. Chicago Ave., a symbol of Emanuel’s misplaced spending priorities.
They have argued that bolstering mental health services and school funding should be higher priorities than the police training that was a primary focus of the U.S. Justice Department’s scathing indictment of the Chicago Police Department after an investigation triggered by the police shooting of Laquan McDonald.
None of that mattered to mayoral allies, who voted 38 to 8 to approve an $85 million contract with engineering giant AECOM to design and build the two-building complex.
Aldermen casting “No” votes were: Leslie Hairston (5th); Susan Sadlowski Garza (10th); Roberto Maldonado (26th); Scott Waguespack (32nd); Deb Mell (33rd); Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th); John Arena (45th) and Ameya Pawar (47th).
At one point during debate on the AECOM contract, West Side Ald. Jason Ervin (28th) rose to accuse “people who don’t live on the West Side of trying to tell us how to live.”
His voice rising over the protesters’ chants, Ervin noted that every one of the incumbent West Side aldermen was re-elected on Feb. 26 and that they are united in their support for the project.
“Elections have consequences — and you lost!” Ervin shouted over the jeering crowd in the gallery and hundreds more outside the doors to the City Council chambers.
Ald. Walter Burnett (27th), whose ward includes the current police academy, said he “feels safe” every morning when he goes to the Palace Grill and sees a restaurant full of police recruits.
“Think of what it can do for the West Side,” Burnett said.
After the roll call vote, Emanuel rose to claim victory from the rostrum, but was shouted down by protesters chanting the now familiar, “No cop academy. $95 million for community,” and “Sixteen shots.”
Emanuel waited patiently until they filed out of the Council chambers. Then, he argued that the project would be a catalyst for both development and safety in a West Side neighborhood that desperately needs both.
Next up was Lincoln Yards, the 55-acre development in the previously-protected North Branch industrial corridor that runs along the Chicago River through Lincoln Park and Bucktown.
The argument from local Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) was that the 23,000 jobs and 6,000 new residential units were simply too big a prize to let get away.
“It is a zoning amendment in the 2nd Ward — nothing more. Nothing less,” Hopkins said.
Still, Hopkins said he is not “invoking aldermanic privilege,” the unwritten rule that gives the local alderman iron-fisted control over zoning in his or her ward.
He’s asking for colleagues’ approval because, “It’s the right thing to do for the city and it’s the right thing to do for the economy.”
Ald. Susan Sadlowski Garza (10th) countered that she can’t support a zoning change that sets the stage for a vote next month on a $900 million tax-increment-financing (TIF) subsidy when her Southeast Side ward desperately needs funding for a host of long-stalled infrastructure projects.
“I need that money to come to the Southeast Side. We’re dying there,” Sadlowski Garza said.
North Side Ald. Harry Osterman (48th) warned about over-development and the congestion that 6,000 additional units will bring.
“This is super-sized. This is Schaumburg Yards — not Lincoln Yards,” Osterman said.
“This is the rich getting richer. This is the North Side getting norther.”
Noting that the amount of promised parkland doubled during negotiations leading to Wednesday’s vote, Osterman said: “Think about what two more months [of bargaining] might do.”
For months, Emanuel has pressured the council to approve both controversial projects, even as mayoral runoff opponents Toni Preckwinkle and Lori Lightfoot have urged aldermen to slow down and wait until one of them takes office.
Both candidates have questioned the $900 million subsidy that will be used to reimburse developer Sterling Bay for an array of infrastructure projects at a time when the city faces a $1 billion spike in pension payments and other pressing concerns.
Concerned that both projects could be killed by his successor, the retiring mayor took no chances. He convinced his allies to ignore the protesters and the heavy police presence summoned to control them at Wednesday’s meeting.
The massive subsidy was introduced only Wednesday. It’s expected to be approved next month at one of Emanuel’s final meetings. That gives opponents one last chance to air their grievance.
Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th) had a political warning for those who dared to rush through the Lincoln Yards and police academy projects, as well as a lucrative tax break that will pave the way for Hilco Redevelopment Partners’ to build a controversial distribution center on the site of the shuttered Crawford coal-fired power plant in Little Village.
“In the City Council, sometimes it seems like you only understand things that are crude,” Ramirez-Rosa told a news conference before Wednesday’s meeting, to the cheers of the protesters behind and alongside of him.
“Vote for the community today or, whether it be in four weeks or four years, we will vote you out. See, Rahm Emanuel is leaving. He’s not gonna cut you those $20,000 checks anymore. But these are the working people of Chicago … that built this movement. And we’re not going anywhere.”
