Editorial: Does Brandon Johnson’s budget spell doom for LaSalle Street redevelopment?

It’s time for Brandon Johnson to say whether or not he supports the redevelopment of LaSalle Street.

The mayor’s first budget suggests he doesn’t. But he and his administration have yet to provide badly needed clarity on that question.

The issue: The mayor reclaimed $434 million in money stashed in tax-increment financing districts to balance his budget, by far the single biggest source he used to try to fill a $538 million gap for the coming fiscal year. More than 25% of that is being withdrawn from TIF funds supporting five projects on LaSalle Street designed to transform emptying office buildings into mixed-use residential projects.

Aldermen Brendan Reilly, 42nd, and Bill Conway, 34th, who represent downtown wards, say the budget maneuver undermines financing plans for the five developments, greenlighted in the final months of the Lightfoot administration. At a City Council hearing Thursday, all they got were vague reassurances from acting Planning and Development Commissioner Patrick Murphey.

Johnson himself didn’t directly answer whether he supports the LaSalle Street projects when asked after release of his budget more than a week ago, saying only that his administration would put together a comprehensive downtown plan.

To be clear, the city’s share of the LaSalle redevelopment costs is large: $310 million. There is room for debate on whether laying out all that cash for five developments is proper bang for the buck.

The LaSalle Street TIF commitments also trace back to the late months of the Lightfoot administration. It wouldn’t be unusual for a new mayor who campaigned on change to want to put his stamp on the critical issue of reviving downtown.

Could that money be spent more wisely? Perhaps. If that’s how the Johnson administration thinking, it’s time to say so. The developers already have laid out fair sums for preliminary work. They deserve to know — now.

What shouldn’t be up for debate is the city getting involved in reimagining downtown Chicago and doing so with investment, not just spoken platitudesand zoning changes.

Iconic LaSalle Street is an appropriate place on which to focus given its beauty, its financial difficulties and its central place in the city’s economic history. A hollowed out thoroughfare in the middle of the Loop would be a hole in the heart of the city.

Transforming a street that once epitomized Chicago’s brawny financial status into a mix of uses, including residences, hotels and perhaps retail in the future could spawn more development around it and keep the Loop vital for generations to come.

So what’s at stake for Johnson and fellow progressives who emphasize economic development in neglected neighborhoods to the south and west of downtown? Without a thriving downtown — the economic engine of the city, generating the bulk of tax revenues keeping municipal government functioning — good luck finding the public money Johnson rightly says is needed to invest in the South and West sides.

Johnson took the easiest route available to balancing his first budget. Snatching the money set aside in TIF funds did the heavy lifting to close that $538 million gap. The mayor used the method in a bigger way than any of his predecessors had when filling budget holes.

Not only did the TIF cash help City Hall’s finances, it’s providing a nice infusion to Chicago Public Schools, too, a key goal of Johnson’s Chicago Teachers Union allies.

But this is a one-year fix. The future of LaSalle Street will need a multiyear effort.

The risk here is that this shortsighted decision kneecaps that critical initiative before it even really begins.

At the very least, Reilly and Conway deserve answers as to what the depletion of TIF funds set aside for the Central Loop means for the LaSalle Street developers. The inartful dodging of those straightforward questions is an early and troubling hallmark of this administration.

Lots of blather. Little substantive communication.

And if this first budget really represents the early demise of some or all of those five projects, then the Johnson administration ought to speak forthrightly about their alternative plans.. Doing so should involve the business community on ways the city can partner with private enterprise on common goals.

To date, the mayor’s approach essentially has been to ask business leaders not whether they can pay more in taxes and for what, but simply in what form they’d like to pay those higher levies.

Aside from Johnson’s yet-to-be-defined relationship with the business community, what isn’t acceptable is allowing these plans to die a slow death.

The Loop isn’t coming back without help. It’s in no one’s interest to let it wither.

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