Why Give Him Money?

Reinsdorf is spending his own money on the west side:

• As White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf seeks $1 billion in taxpayer funding for a new ballpark in a planned mixed-use district in the South Loop, his associates have spent millions of dollars buying parking lots run by his competitors to build what could be a similar district around the United Center.

  Over the past 19 months, a Reinsdorf-connected company has spent $44.7 million buying vacant lots from two politically connected families that have long offered discounted parking deals to fans of the Bulls and Blackhawks, records examined by the Chicago Sun-Times show. A third family has refused to sell its parking lots.

But this is what really caught our attention - we had known this previously, but forgotten:

• Reinsdorf, who is also chairman of the Bulls, and the Wirtz family, which owns the Blackhawks, co-own the United Center, which they built 30 years ago without any government financing. Both teams have since built practice facilities near the arena, which is a major catalyst for economic development on the West Side.

Say what you like about the late Dollar Bill Wirtz, but he led the way on financing the United Center via a consortium of (we think) Japanese banks and paid the whole thing off within a few years. Of course, back then, he and Jerry were filling the stadium almost a hundred nights a year and raking in concert, circus and ice shows another fifty or seventy afternoons and evenings. Not like today's disasters.

So why are Reinsdorf and his people buying up parking lots? 

Because he can't buy up Bridgeport, level it, and build a giant hotel/bar scene like Wrigleyville already is. Or what the Bears have planned for Arlington Heights. Or what they The 78 will be in the South Loop. 

But if he's going to reap the benefits, he ought to be risking and leveraging his own money, they way Wirtz did last century.