I'm very curious about the accusation from Eva Young and
David Piehl that the funding for a hotel was engineered
somehow sub-rosa and as a result of money changing hands.
The EZone money was designed for the area of Lake Street
beginning at 35W and going East to Chicago Av.(?). The EZ
money is to redevelop Lake Street.
A city council member's job is to round up the resources to
get jobs like that done in his/her ward. One of the
resources is developers. They get paid to develop. Same with
Target, with the up-coming Guthrie, E Block, the library.
You name it. Now Lilligren will have to pick up the work and
do precisely the same thing Herron did--bring in developers
to do economic redevelopment of Lake St. and he's use EZ
money to make it happen.
Presumably, the developers are in it to make money. If my
understanding is correct, Sabri lent Herron a couple
thousand (it turns out to be a loan, the whole restitution
is $9,000).
If the money comes from the EZ, it makes perfect sense in
light of the goal of redeveloping Lake Street. It was done
completely aboveboard, the EZ board voted on the project,
etc.
What Herron conceded, at a meeting held better than a year
ago, is that it didn't make good political sense to get a
code change to build a hotel on Second Av. if the whole
process was going to be opposed by the people on the block
and surrounding it vehemently, and the rest of the
neighborhood was not entirely sold on the project.
The fact that some folks have decided that Sabri is a slime
ball does not change the fact that he is a developer and
developers were needed. Sabri is actually more complex than
that, he's actually a human, member of the same species, and
he has a dark side. He has an internally contradictory
personality.
What I'm not sure about, having too little experience, is
whether or not every other developer is somewhat the same or
a variation on the theme with a more subtle approach.
WizardMarks, Central
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