It's a tough bar for the project to clear, but the promise all along from Rauner and UIUC was that state funding would be matched with private investment and taxpayers wouldn't be footing the bill for a largely private research facility. Now that Pritzker is actually holding UIUC to their promise, everyone is calling it unreasonable. Lol.
If this project is such a slam dunk, then it should absolutely be possible to raise this private investment. If not, then it's a bad deal for the state and should be scrapped. Remember that Pritzker started 1871 with private capital, so he understands the tech world probably better than Rauner did. But our state is very broke, the last thing we need to do is shovel a half billion dollars into the pockets of tech companies (indirectly) with no guarantee of any spillover benefits to the state's economy. We could build this thing and it will sit empty, if there is no real interest from the private sector... need to make sure that private partners have a lot of skin in the game as well.
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Originally Posted by bullsfan7210
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No, the DPI site is west of the (re-aligned) Metra tracks and north of the St Charles Air Line tracks. The Red Line entrance is in a different building east of the Metra tracks, which is just vanilla office with some retail. The two buildings do look similar in renderings, but I'm sure those are just placeholder designs.