It’s spring-cleaning week-time to clear the desktop of half-baked column ideas.
So, even though nobody asked, it seems to me that:
. . . A lot of the bellyaching about the volatility of financial “derivatives” is coming from Wall Streeters jealous that Chicago, not New York, is home to the financial futures trading that underlies those techniques.
And the NBA playoffs haven’t even started.
. . . Chicago is missing a bet by mooring all five of its hoped-for riverboat casinos in one spot. During the summer one boat should be free to troll the Lake Michigan skyline, with scheduled stops at the new Navy Pier, the expanded McCormick Place and whatever is built on the site of the old South Works plant.
Those no-gambling-on-the-lake purists are trying to run our lakefront as though it were their personal park.
. . . The people who run the University of Illinois at (“don’t call us `Circle’ “) Chicago are acting abominably by evicting the Maxwell Street market rather than helping those unwashed entrepreneurs build a better marketplace.
UIC Chancellor James Stukel could take a lesson from De Paul University, which has helped rebuild its Lincoln Park neighborhood and breathed new life into the South Loop’s Blackstone Theater and Goldblatt’s Building.
UIC dons like to jabber about city-building. De Paul just does it.
. . . The city had better improve corporate jet facilities at Midway Airport before it shuts Meigs Field so the lakefront peninsula can be turned into a nature preserve.
I like migratory birds as much as the next person, but has anyone studied the economic impact of closing the little jetport that puts the Loop’s legal and financial services within an easy fly-in of every major corporation in the Upper Midwest?
. . . Somebody should throw a net over the folks planning the downtown circulator trolley. What started as a single, off-street “super-Loop” to connect the commuter rail stations with North Michigan Avenue and the McCormick Place/museum area has metamorphosed into a $775 million on-street system with a route map that looks like a bird’s nest.
Planners say there’s enough room on 20 crowded downtown streets to dedicate another lane or two for a trolley. Uh-huh. And the overhead wires will look just great.
. . . The city ought to lower its sights for Block 37 in the North Loop and recruit a discount department store for the vacant plot between the Daley Center and Marshall Field’s State Street store. Years ago the city condemned the block, cleared it and resold it to developers for $22 million less than it paid for it.
Despite the huge subsidy, developers have been unable to line up tenants for a planned office-over-retail complex. It hasn’t helped that the city insists on anchoring the development with a Nordstrom or some other top-shelf retailer compatible with nearby Field’s and Carson Pirie Scott.
Time’s up. A Kmart or Venture would be just fine.
. . . In an effort to placate his opposition on the City Council, Mayor Daley is about to resurrect a city ordinance requiring private contractors to hire at least 50 percent Chicago residents on city-funded public-works projects.
This is the mayor who says he’s going to help business by repealing the city’s $5-a-month head tax.
Don’t believe that until you see it. Meanwhile, if you do business with the city, get ready to open your personnel files to city inspectors, known worldwide for their honesty and hard work.
. . . My federal income-tax liability for ’93 was about the same as for ’92. I suspect that was the case for most readers.
This came as a pleasant surprise, especially after months of listening to Clinton-bashers rail that last year’s retroactive tax increase was the biggest in U.S. history.
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Then again, I’m not one of the fortunate few who qualify for the new 36 percent and 39.6 percent tax brackets. If you are, see your financial adviser about tax-exempt bonds and tax-deferred annuities. If you aren’t, see Hillary Rodham Clinton’s advisers about how to turn a $1,000 investment in commodity futures into a cool $100,000 profit.
But don’t forget, as she apparently did, to pay all your taxes on the gain.
That about does it. Feels good to end the week with a clean desk.