- Rich Hein / Sun-Times Media
- The former campus of Michael Reese Hospital, shown in 2009, the year the city bought the property. The bill—up to $91 million—is now coming due.
Yesterday was a banner day in the city’s effort to waste more property tax dollars on dreadful tax increment financing deals.
Instead, I learned about the payment in an article by Micah Maidenberg, a real estate reporter for Crain’s Chicago Business.
At the time, Daley and his aides swore up and down that the transaction would not cost us, the taxpayers, a dime. Then they launched into one of those long and convoluted explanations officials resort to when they want to fool you into believing something that can’t possibly be true.
I might as well mention that some of Medline’s principals have been generous contributors to Mayor Emanuel’s election campaigns. Another thing you won’t read about in a mayoral press release.
Altogether it will cost us about $120.7 million—in interest and principal—to buy Michael Reese from Medline, according to Crain’s. The payments will be spread out over ten years.
When the patients’ survivors tried to collect, they discovered that the nursing home company had been sold to a retired graphic artist named Barry Saacks, who says he didn’t know he’d bought it.
