[Mr Downtown]

^Thanks for your perspective.

One thing that's been really striking here is the incredible clumsiness shown by the U of C, which I always thought of as having a pretty sophisticated community relations office and history, going all the way back to painful lessons they learned 40 years ago with The Woodlawn Organization. I have to wonder if somehow their hand was forced (by the committee leak implying Chicago's bids were weak) with some key piece of the plan missing, and now they're in the no-win situation of having to publicly defend a half-assed library/redevelopment plan that wasn't what they had in mind at all. It reminds me a bit of the fiasco 18 months ago when MPEA prematurely announced a huge hotel on the McHugh land they didn't yet control.