The City of Chicago is reorganizing its economic development programs.
Again.
It happens every three or four years. A newly elected mayor or a frustrated incumbent looks around and says to him- or herself: ”This city is losing jobs, and we`ve got to do something!”
Mayor Byrne did it. So did Mayors Washington and Sawyer, and now Daley.
Departments and commissions are created or consolidated. A fresh crop of business leaders is invited to sit on an advisory commission or an urban renewal board. Staff changes are made. A new development ”czar” is named.
But after all the announcements are announced and the press releases released, things tend to limp along much as they they did before the hoopla. Which is to say, the city keeps losing jobs and not much gets done.
The bottom line for the 1980s: The city lost nearly 130,000 manufacturing jobs, more than canceling its gain of 83,000 service-sector jobs. There are now more jobs in the suburbs than the city, a historic reversal.
It`s easy-too easy-to criticize City Hall. A lot of media pundits claim government should just get out of the private sector`s way. But this corner is convinced that government needs to play a strong role in promoting and directing economic growth. (Forget what went wrong in Russia; think about the success of Japan Inc., where the public and private march in lock step.)
The need for government intervention is especially great in older cities such as Chicago. Businesses need all the help they can get assembling chopped- up urban land for modern factories, training poorly educated workers and raising crumbling streets and viaducts to the standards dictated by the semitrailer truck. This is no easy chore at a time when city budgets are hard- pressed to fund basics such as police and fire service and when the federal government has walked away.
Still, you get frustrated at how long it takes to get things done.
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Before taking over as financial editor, I covered the city`s economic development apparatus for 10 years. Several of the projects I followed-from one tedious public hearing to the next-still are waiting to get done.
One of the saddest cases was the old Schoenhofen Brewery, a collection of nine vacant industrial buildings on the Near South Side. The city bought the vacated complex in 1977 with the idea of selling it to a developer who would rehab it and put it back on the tax rolls.
Months turned into years while city officials and neighborhood activists turned away commercial developers in search of an industrial user. Eventually vandals and midnight garbage dumpers forced the city to tear down all but two of the main buildings. Finally, in 1989, a bottling company bought them and is slowly-but-surely rehabbing them.
But long delays are not unusual when it comes to economic development in Chicago. Other proposals that have been spinning their wheels for five years or longer include the proposed transit shopping mall at Howard and Paulina Streets, a half dozen industrial parks and the granddaddy of them all-the still-to-be-completed North Loop Redevelopment Project, in its 13th year.
One product the city`s economic development did churn out in the `80s was paper. The city published scores of demographic studies, task force reports and planning surveys that analyzed everything from the number of factory jobs on Goose Island to the economic benefits of big league baseball.
Some of the studies were worthwhile, but much was gobbledygook. Consider this advice from a 1987 report by the Economic Development Commission titled
”Summary of Economic Development Recommendations for the Chicago Area”:
No. 1. Undertake specific industry studies to inform targeted programs of assistance.
In other words, do more studies.
Now, we are told that Mayor Richard M. Daley has seen enough studies.
”We`re going to be short on plans and long on action,” promises John Frazee Jr., the top gun at Centel Corp. and the executive named by the mayor last week to head a revamped Economic Development Commission.
”We`re going to produce results, not just studies,” echoes Valerie Jarrett, the young lawyer Daley has put in charge of consolidating the Department of Planning and Department of Economic Development into a Department of Planning and Development. She also will oversee consolidation of the city`s two land condemnation and resale agencies-the Urban Renewal Board and the Commercial District Development Commission-into a Community Development Commission.
That makes sense. The city had too many planning agencies headed in too many directions.
But the real test is whether Daley and his budget-makers will come up with the money to do the nitty-gritty work of economic development: assembling and reselling urban land at prices companies can afford, improving and maintaining streets and sewers, chasing out the midnight dumpers, vandals and smash-and-grab muggers.
That`s a lot tougher than redoing letterheads or shuffling the desks at City Hall, but the work is well worth doing.
Chicago can`t afford to see its job base melt away like the Schoenhofen Brewery.