Tag: soccer

construction equipment building a soccer stadium, with Roosevelt Road in the foreground

Chicago is about to spend millions on a new parking garage and nothing on transit at The 78

July 10, 2026 / / 0 Comments

This week I asked my alderperson to defer the finance committee’s vote on a massive funding package that would have the city own a parking garage while at the same time making zero investments in transit.

Dear Alderperson Conway,

I think it’s prudent and appropriate if you would, as Finance Committee Vice Chair, to defer voting on the $425 million TIF package for The 78 until several questions and planning issues are resolved. I think you’re the ideal alderperson to insist that a commitment this large has greater scrutiny before it moves and I’m asking you to defer the vote and build consensus on the committee, and gain more support from Chicagoans, to hold it until there’s more analysis and understanding of the pros and cons.

This public commitment deserves more vetting and public engagement than has happened so far and the current timeline will permit. Three concerns stand out.

First, a large share of this package would build an approximately 1,200-space, below-grade garage that the City would own and operate, and I don’t believe public TIF dollars should be underwriting a permanent and expensive parking structure, especially given the city’s track record as a steward of its own parking. In 2006 Chicago leased the garages under Grant and Millennium parks to investors for $563 million over 99 years, a deal that later cost taxpayers roughly $62 million in 2015 1for allowing competing parking and eventually collapsed into default for the investors. Operating parking garages is a risky investment. Before the committee votes, I’d want to understand why a new City-owned garage is a wise use of this money, when it would actually begin generating revenue, and how any proceeds would be directed toward community needs rather than servicing the project or paying back debt used to construct it.

Second, this package includes no transit investment. The original vision for The 78 was anchored by a new CTA Red Line station inside the site, at roughly 15th and Clark, which would ensure that the future residents, tenants, and visitors would not have to rely on cars to get around and add to the local traffic. Public funding to build a new ‘L’ station (approved by City Council in April 2019) would do far more for the city’s climate and equity goals than attracting more driving to the site. Why is the city planning to fund a single-purpose garage while the transit that was supposed to anchor the project is left out?

Third, The 78 has a tenuous plan for its second phase once the soccer stadium is built. The project has long promised thousands of homes in future phases but assurances that residential will be built, and how and when essential infrastructure will be built and funded, are inadequate. The September 2025 presentation2 to Chicago Plan Commission showed the residential area being used as surface car parking for an indefinite period of time. Before the city puts up roughly $425 million, there should be a defined phase-two plan that includes a substantial residential component. The transit-adjacent site is the ideal location for new housing: it would help ease the region’s shortage and give people the option to live near jobs and transit.

I’m asking for your help to get better answers, a better plan, and additional public input, by deferring the vote in Finance. And thank you for the scrutiny you’ve already brought to the city’s finances. 

Respectfully,

Steven Vance

  1. Chicago Sun-Times ↩︎
  2. Chicago Plan Commission ↩︎

World Cup and Olympics construction will disadvantage Rio’s poor

May 9, 2011 / / 0 Comments

It is a scene we see every four years when the Olympics come around: Development that displaces a group of people who lack a good defense, unlike the futebol team they used to pay $1.80 to see.

There used to be a standing-room only general admission area in the Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, years ago, but no longer exists today, according to an article yesterday in the New York Times. (Rio will host the 2016 Olympics after beating Tokyo, Madrid, and Chicago.)

The price of tickets is important to cariocas (residents of Rio) because of the stadium’s “role as an egalitarian space in a heavily unequal city like Rio.”

“What could be lost is the nature of the stadium experience as something that cuts across the class segregation of the city as a whole,” Bruno Carvalho said, a Rio native who is an assistant professor of Brasilian studies at Princeton. “Do you give up the vitality of the Maracanã as a public space, a rare type of space in Rio where you can actually get together people of different social classes?”

Members of the National Fans Association understand that safety and comfort upgrades, for which the general admission area was removed, have to be made for an event such as the World Cup 2014, but they want to ensure that other venues under construction be integrated and their designers consult local urban planners and neighborhood groups.

Nine new venues will be constructed for the Rio Olympic Games, and seven venues will be constructed but removed after the closing ceremony. For the 2008 Beijing Olympics, thousands of city residents were “relocated.” Some reports say 15,000 moved voluntarily with compensation and another says 300,000 were evicted.

I have a concern that in the next five years, there will be founded accusations of cariocas’ civil rights as “progress” pushes them out of the way.

Photo of the Maracanã stadium by Phil Whitehouse.