Posted on 01/30/2008 3:07:59 PM PST by Lorianne
Neighbors call it "the French Embassy."
The new, 8,200-square-foot mansion is by far the biggest house on the 1800 block of North Wood Street, leaving Fred Ehle's four-bedroom home next door in its shadow.
"I don't mind gentrification and development -- I live in Bucktown -- but it has gone out of control," Ehle said. "It's crazy. It's so obviously different than what the neighborhood was and still is."
Zoning rules had prohibited such a behemoth from going up on the block. But that was before the developer got a break from then-Ald. Ted Matlak (32nd). Two weeks after the developer applied for a lucrative "upzoning" so he could build a much bigger house, one of the developer's companies gave the alderman a $2,000 campaign contribution.
The real zoning code in Chicago is unwritten, but developers know it well: Changes in zoning go hand in hand with contributions to aldermanic campaigns.
In an unprecedented investigation of city development, the Tribune examined 5,700 zoning changes approved by the City Council over the last decade and recorded on sheets of paper clipped into binders in a City Hall office. The newspaper converted the paper records into an electronic database to perform an analysis of development beyond the scope of anything previously possible, even for city planners.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Picking up trash, snow removal, parking tickets, speeding tickets, assault charges, gambling charges, racketeering charges, murder charges, and serial killing all get taken care of with greased palms of aldermen.
Where has the Tribune been? Oh, and they haven't had a reporter since Royko died!!
Picking up trash, snow removal, parking tickets, speeding tickets, assault charges, gambling charges, racketeering charges, murder charges, and serial killing all get taken care of with greased palms of aldermen.
Where has the Tribune been? Oh, and they haven't had a reporter since Royko died!!
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