Thirty-six years ago, Chicago White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf had his bags packed and the trucks loaded for St. Petersburg, Fla. A stadium was all but waiting for him. So was a city and its baseball-hungry fan base — with open arms.
Now, Reinsdorf is using a similar, but hypothetical argument to make the case for more than $1 billion in taxpayer dollars and $900 million more worth of public infrastructure he needs to build a new Sox stadium in the South Loop.
State Rep. Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) said she has seen this movie before.
“I was in Sarasota when he played the same game threatening to move the spring training facility. He got the facility — and moved anyway, to Arizona. My high school played at a state-of-the-art facility because somebody had to use it,” she said.
In an hour-long interview over lunch this week with Crain’s Chicago Business, Reinsdorf, 87, said his son Michael will be obligated to do what’s best for Sox investors when he dies, which “likely means putting the team up for sale.” Reinsdorf noted the way to get the most money for the team would be to move it, possibly to Nashville, where he already has met with the mayor.
“The team will be worth more out of town,” Reinsdorf was quoted as saying.
Reinsdorf added that his goal is not to make money, but to field a winning team and save the Sox for Chicago. Guaranteed Rate Field, opened in 1991, cost Illinois taxpayers $137 million, but baseball’s economics have changed. The team can’t make enough money to pay today’s salaries at a stadium surrounded by surface parking, the Sox chairman told Crain’s.
The opposite would be true if a new Sox stadium is used as the catalyst to develop the South Loop parcel known as “The 78.” The long-vacant 62 acres would be turned into a vibrant new neighborhood, with 5,000 residential units, an office building, a hotel and dozens of restaurants and bars along a reinvigorated south riverfront within walking distance of downtown Chicago.
But that save-the-Sox-for-Chicago argument was “not even remotely compelling” to Cassidy, who was already incredulous about the timing of Reinsdorf’s trip to Springfield earlier this week to start lobbying for the massive stadium subsidy.
“I don’t think we should be subsidizing successful billionaire businessmen. Period. I’m tired of giving hand-outs to make people even more wealthy than they already are,” Cassidy said.
“He could sell it today, if he wants to. If he wants to build a new stadium and set us up for them staying, he’s free to do so. … He’s got that kind of money. He is free to do that with his money and set up the inheritance for his son.”
Neither Reinsdorf nor Related Midwest President Curt Bailey could be reached for comment. Related Midwest spokesperson Tricia Van Horn had no immediate comment.
Greg Baise has a unique perspective on the arguments Reinsdorf is now using to make the case for a subsidy that dwarfs the assistance the Sox sought back in the 1980s.
Baise was state transportation secretary and a trusted adviser to then-Gov. Jim Thompson in 1988 when Thompson famously stopped the clock at midnight and twisted arms to deliver the votes that prevented the Sox from moving to St. Petersburg.
“Jim Thompson decided that he was not gonna see the White Sox leave on his watch. That was something that he was just not going to allow. … He was at the end of, what was his 14 years as governor. He was looking at his own legacy. The fabric of Chicago was not going to be torn away on his watch,” Baise said.
“You had a governor who had the will and also the moxie to be able to get it done at the time. I don’t think you have that situation now. Mr. [J.B.] Pritzker does not look like somebody who would care one way or the other if part of his legacy was losing a sports franchise in Chicago. … Chicago’s identity is not tied to a franchise. The Bears may come closer to it, and the Cubs. But certainly not the White Sox.”
A White Sox game at old Comiskey Park in 1990, the last year the team played there before moving to New Comiskey Park, seen rising beyond the first base line (left rear).
To jump-start development at The 78, the Sox and developer Related Midwest, which owns the site at Roosevelt and Clark, want to draw on bonds issued by the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority backed by a 2% hotel tax and a sales tax district.
The infrastructure costs alone — on a vacant parcel with railroad tracks running through it — would be $900 million, Reinsdorf told Crain’s. Those expenses include roughly 4,000 underground parking spaces and would need to be funded by an existing tax increment financing district. That would appear to be a tall order from Mayor Brandon Johnson, who campaigned on a promise to do away with massive TIF subsides .
“It’s an uphill battle because things have changed. You just don’t have the will to do something like that that was there the last time this occurred,” Baise said.
“If you recall, the folks in St. Petersburg had a big party already going. They thought they were gonna get the White Sox when Thompson pulled the last-minute thing. It’s vastly different than it was then. It’s a much harder sell now than it was then.”
Reinsdorf argued to Crain’s that the benefits to Chicago outweigh the costs, since the project isn’t just about building a ballpark.
Cassidy scoffed at that argument at a time when the demand for city and state public money for critical social programs has never been higher.
At “every single meeting I’ve had with folks, I’ve given them the same warning: We’ve been told this is gonna be a tough budget year. We don’t have extra money to invest. These are things that are pretty compelling. And they’re not about keeping a billionaire happy,” she said.
“This guy shows up at the beginning of the budget cycle demanding … close to $2 billion now if you add what he wants from the city,” Cassidy added. “If I were here in the 80’s, I would have told him to enjoy St. Pete.”
The Tampa Bay Devil Rays played their first game in March 1998 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla. — but the White Sox nearly moved to that stadium when it was being built a decade earlier.
