The irony is that if Balkany et al hadn't raised a huge preservation stink, the property would have been more likely to stand vacant rather than succumb to a fast-track demolition.
"No man, no problem."
That said, without said preservation stink, we may not have even been so lucky as to have Singer saved, so perhaps it was worth it.
It's not like this city has any shortage, past or present, of huge of large desolate patches of nothing that came to exist due to government clear-cutting. Block 37 speaks for itself, but what about
:
Still extant government-sponsored desolate urban prairies
1. Cabrini-Green
2. Robert Taylor
3. Medical District
4. Many other CHA sites (smaller than 1 and 2 but still large gaping holes in urban continuity with zero prospect of redevelopment)
Other large land clearances also took decades to develop. Even Clark Street and patches of LaSalle were a prairie until the 1980s after clearance as part of the Sandburg Village project in 1960:
And of course, the stuff that finally did get built along Clark is criminally awful gated townhouse crap and a stripmall style grocery store.
Some of the area around South Commons has never redeveloped. Slum clearance along Madison's "Skid Row" basically resulted in the parking lots around Presidential Towers.
In fact, when was the last large scale government-led clearance of large swaths of land that
didn't result in decades of nothingness? UIC-Circle Campus?
As stated,
there is no market pressure to redevelop MRH nor is there any such pressure anywhere in sight. This will be a blighted pocket of nothingness for decades, just like all the others before it. But hey, at least Heneghan got their contract, and when the time comes to make the really big deal there won't be anyone in the way.
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