Search for names of people who do business in Chicago.
I created a combined dataset of over 2 million names, including contractors, architects, business names, and business owners and their shareholders, from Chicago’s open data portal, and property owners/managers from the property tax database. It’s one of three new features published in the last couple of weeks.
Type a person or company name in the search bar and press “search”. In less than 1 second you’ll get results and a hint as to what kind of records we have.
What should you search?
Take any news article about a Chicago kinda situation, like this recent Chicago Sun-Times article about the city using $8 million in taxpayer-provided TIF district money to move the Harriet Rees house one block. The move made way for a taxpayer-funded property acquisition on which the DePaul/McCormick Place stadium will be built.
The CST is making the point that something about the house’s sale and movement is sketchy (although I don’t know if they showed that anything illegal happened).
There’re a lot of names in the article, but here are some of the ones we can find info about in Chicago Cityscape.
Salvatore Martorina – an architect & building permit expeditor, although this name is connected to a lot of other names on the business licenses section of Cityscape
Oscar Tatosian – rug company owner, who owned the vacant lot to which the Rees house was moved
Bulley & Andrews – construction company which moved the house
There were no records for the one attorney and two law firms mentioned.