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13 hours ago • Visible to anyone on or off LinkedIFollow
Justin Ishbia’s vision to create a new home for the Chicago White Sox hinges on an increasingly thorny question: What will become of its current one?
The team and its billionaire owner-in-waiting aren’t formally obligated to answer that once their lease at the state-owned ballpark ends after the 2029 season.
But Ishbia’s push to help Amtrak build a new maintenance facility next to Rate Field — and eventually put a new stadium on the South Loop rail yard it would replace — is forcing the issue into public discourse sooner than expected.
He now faces intense resistance to the potential Amtrak facility from neighborhood officials and residents worried they’re about to trade a professional baseball team and key economic engine for an unsightly, industrial nuisance.
Leaving behind an empty, taxpayer-funded stadium on the South Side with outstanding debt would be an awkward outcome for a developer needing zoning and permit approvals to realize that ambitious vision. That makes the future of a 35-year-old ballpark and the 80 acres on which it sits fertile ground for negotiating how to mitigate the rail facility’s impact and establish the stadium’s next chapter.
Read more here: https://lnkd.in/dZddAKz9
The team and its billionaire owner-in-waiting aren’t formally obligated to answer that once their lease at the state-owned ballpark ends after the 2029 season.
But Ishbia’s push to help Amtrak build a new maintenance facility next to Rate Field — and eventually put a new stadium on the South Loop rail yard it would replace — is forcing the issue into public discourse sooner than expected.
He now faces intense resistance to the potential Amtrak facility from neighborhood officials and residents worried they’re about to trade a professional baseball team and key economic engine for an unsightly, industrial nuisance.
Leaving behind an empty, taxpayer-funded stadium on the South Side with outstanding debt would be an awkward outcome for a developer needing zoning and permit approvals to realize that ambitious vision. That makes the future of a 35-year-old ballpark and the 80 acres on which it sits fertile ground for negotiating how to mitigate the rail facility’s impact and establish the stadium’s next chapter.
Read more here: https://lnkd.in/dZddAKz9
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