The thing that stuck out to me in the Trib article that I wanted to include in
my reporting is this:
Quote:
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The project was first announced in early July, before proposals had been submitted to the city. The developer is now in talks with the city, though applications are not yet filed, according to the city's economic development department.
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The press rollout in July was completely bungled. Obviously nobody in town had any idea that Wanda was going to release the story back then, and everybody in town from Gang to Magellan was still under NDA and couldn't say a word about the project. What's even worse than announcing something before all partners are on the same page is announcing something
before telling the city and alderman about it. Anybody who's seen how things work in this town should know that (Reilly has demonstrated his willingness to kill a project just for going to the press before coming to him), especially with foreign-money projects.
The way things are rolling out this week (pre-announcement leading up to an official unveiling) is how these things usually work, and in the best case would have been the first time anybody heard anything about the project. Wanda clearly jumped the gun, at the risk of imploding the whole deal. I gotta hope that in the future, the Chicago liaisons for these international projects do a better job of coordinating the release of information, because from a PR perspective this thing has been just shy of catastrophic.
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