By chance, word broke of the latest development in the DePaul basketball arena project at about the same time Mayor Rahm Emanuel was promoting his big speech on crime and policing in Chicago.
In contrast, the DePaul deal is the one where the mayor’s building a B-ball arena and a Marriott hotel in a gentrifying corner of the South Loop, using hundreds of millions of public dollars that might otherwise be waged in his all-important war against crime and poverty.
“Fighting crime requires a partnership between the police and the community, and we all know that partnership has been tested in Chicago,” the mayor declared. “The shooting of Laquan McDonald brought it to the breaking point.”
“By the beginning of next year, we will have nearly $8 million in that fund,” the mayor said.
You may not know much about it, because the mayor didn’t make a point of blasting out those details in a televised speech.
The mayor wasn’t kidding when he said change is hard. But apparently, some things—like our reverse-Robin Hood economic development programs—are too hard to change. Right, Mr. Mayor?
