The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

Ben Joravsky doing work.

I'm not sure what it is about the South Loop that makes otherwise pragmatic mayors lose their freaking minds.

I saw the same thing happen with Mayor Daley back in 2008, when he got the council to sign off on buying the old Michael Reese Hospital site for $86 million. It's just a few blocks south of the proposed basketball arena.

Mayor Daley swore up and down that within a year or two, private developers would buy the land from the city, and no taxpayer dollars would be lost.

Alas, the land is still vacant and we still own it. Now Mayor Emanuel is looking to buy some more property.

As with Michael Reese, the money used to buy the land on Cermak comes from the tax increment financing program, the slush fund mayors use to finance their wildest schemes.

More than half the tax dollars we pay into the TIF program are diverted from the Chicago Public Schools, ostensibly to help develop property in blighted areas.

Just so you know, the South Loop is most definitely not a blighted community. Dumping TIF dollars there makes about as much sense as spending them in, oh, River North—which, come to think of it, this mayor has also done.

Like I always say, give a mayor a slush fund and he loses all self-control, like Patty Duke with that hot dog.

As a result of nearly two decades of South Loop development—a good chunk of it subsidized with TIF money—nearly every lot is filled with townhomes or high-rises. And most of the remaining vacant lots have already been earmarked for future development.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.