[Mr Roboto]

Originally Posted by brian_b

I was able to attend the meeting last night and here are a few notes:

• The Rees House will be moved to 2017 S Prairie in late July or early August. They will not be removing furniture or fixtures - just picking up the whole thing and moving it down the street. The old foundation will not be coming along for the ride, but the coach house and front porch are. A few trees will need to be cut down to facilitate the move.
• Demolition for the data center is planned to start this summer.
• There is a planned curb cut on Calumet just north of the ABC building. This will be shared with the hotel, data center, and ABC building. That block of Calumet is currently a one-way street (heading north) and will become 2-way.
• The Lakeside Bank building at 14th and Michigan is scheduled for construction starting this summer.
• The first floor of the ABC building along Cermak will be restaurant space - open to the public.
• The entire first floor of the hotel (except for check-in/check-out desk space) will be retail and restaurant - open to the public.
• The data center developer is contributing $5 million for a pocket park in the vicinity. The site is currently in negotiations so they are not saying where it will be.
• Finally, a few pages ago in this thread (I think it was this thread), I mentioned community demands for school facilities and said that none were needed and it was a crazy demand. Well, the gentleman leading the push gave a small presentation at the meeting. It turns out that the demand is to merge South Loop Elementary and NTA Elementary into a single neighborhood district (dual campus), but make it K-12 instead of K-8. To do this, they envision an expansion
  of NTA for the 9-12 classrooms. There is plenty of city-owned land at NTA for such an expansion. After hearing him out and seeing the slides he brought, I should say that I was wrong and that I do support the plan and that the near south TIF should either pay for it or have the base assessment revisited so that property taxes can pay for it. The $55 million in TIF money going to this hotel represents less than 1 year of near south TIF proceeds, and the school proposal isn't even asking for that much.

Good summary, thanks. (I also agree about the school proposal.) Here is a link to the entire presentation (also posted in the general developments thread):

http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=0012CenB...2EuXFvtnqgVg==