Guaranteed Rate Field, with appropriate rebuild, would be perfect for the Bears. They only have about 11 home games and almost all of them are at off-peak travel times, writes a Sun-Times reader.
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The number one priority regarding the White Sox is to keep them in Chicago. As a one- baseball team city, we just become Pittsburgh or Cincinnati.
The 78 is a great and promising site. It will finally give the Sox a stadium with easy access from both the city and suburbs, a boost they’ve needed for decades.
Yet, the move need not be the end of the current location as a sports venue. The place, with appropriate rebuild, would be perfect for the Bears. They only have about 11 home games and almost all of them are at off-peak travel times. They would have the bountiful parking Soldier Field lacked, eliminating the dreadful mile or more trek from car to field and back in sub freezing temperatures. The neighborhood would remain a sports mecca and now revolving around Chicago’s most popular team.
One more thing: please put a roof on both of them.
Joel Ostrow, Deerfield
Kudos to Sun-Times dean of architecture criticism
Salute to Chicago Sun-Times critic Lee Bey for his meaty analysis of local architecture. His recent column on a potential new Chicago White Sox stadium in The 78, a development along the Chicago River, is a great example.
I was for the new stadium in part because it would drive development overall, but now I’m taking a second look following Bey’s evaluation of the project amid questions about the benefits, the politics and the impact on Armour Square/Bridgeport, among other things.
Other recent pieces on the 1130 S. Wabash Ave. building, the Thompson Center and Angelo Caputo’s Fresh Markets store were similarly insightful.
Chicago boasts Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critics with Paul Gapp and Blair Kamin, both with the Chicago Tribune. Gapp died, and Kamin took up the baton, but he departed the paper in 2021.
Bey is the new dean of architectural criticism in Chicago.
Craig Barner, Lincoln Square
Following the money
I have a simple question about the Bring Chicago Home referendum. Does the money expected to be collected from this new tax go into a “lock box” earmarked to be spent only on homelessness? Or will it go into the general city treasury? If it is the latter, then very little will ever make its way toward the homelessness problem since the funds will be drained away toward other competing issues. You will simply be voting for a generic tax increase.
Mark Frank, Rogers Park
Pension tension
If people want to know why Illinois is in such poor financial condition, especially with pensions, read the article on Eileen O’Neill Burke and others. These politicians are receiving pensions that are close to equaling their income when working, even while working other Illinois government jobs. Most receive pensions that non-government working people could only dream of. After reading the article, it’s obvious why greedy politicians in Illinois refuse to address pension reform.
Joe Revane, Lombard
An extra’s extra-special experience participating in a Chicago classic
Richard Roeper’s column (Feb. 2) on the film “Groundhog Day” brought back good memories. I had the good fortune to be cast as an extra for two weeks. My role was as a Pennsylvania police lieutenant. There was at the time a Pennsylvania police barracks near Punxsutawney, so the commanding officer participated in the Gobbler’s Knob ceremony. I was so excited I took the last Metra train the night before to be on time for the 5 a.m. call. So I spent the night in the Woodstock train station.
Subsequently, a friend who was also cast invited me to share his camper at a nearby campground with hot showers and flush toilets. Another highlight occurred between calls for “action.” To keep the crowd of extras focused, the first assistant director invited jokes and stories about groundhogs which he then related to the crowd. ”What do you get when you cross a Canadian and a groundhog? Six more weeks of hockey.”
I experienced many other positives during the two weeks.
As Roeper writes, watching the crew manage the meteorological continuity during the complexity of the full day-to-day shooting of the Gobbler’s Knob scene was interesting. I considered the two weeks time well spent despite the long days.
Jim Halas, Norridge
Take the protests elsewhere
Thank you for publishing “Left-wingers will not be ignored” by Neil Steinberg (Feb. 2). He takes would-be protesters to task for wanting to protest at the Democratic National Convention. He particularly criticizes Andy Thayer, a well-known protester.
Thayer has said many times that the Democrats promise changes while running for office, but fail to deliver once in office.
Is he kidding? Thayer criticized Obamacare as too Republican, but over 15 million Americans have signed up for it so far in 2024. Republicans have tried to repeal it over and over, unsuccessfully. And Biden has given us infrastructure funding, inflation-reducing strategies, and green energy help. True, no one in Congress has tried to repeal the Hyde Amendment, the law banning federal funding for abortion. But who appointed the Supreme Court justices who voted to save Roe? Democrats, of course.
Who gave us Social Security, early childhood education and three civil rights acts? Who integrated the U.S. Armed Forces? All came from Democrats. Republicans gave us tax breaks and onerous abortion laws.
Everyone has a right to protest. But I agree with Steinberg that Thayer and his crowd should protest in Milwaukee at the Republican convention.
Jan Goldberg, Riverside
Don’t ignore ordinance on building electrification
The Chicago City Council should study and pass the Clean and Affordable Buildings Ordinance (CABO) so that Chicago can begin to move toward the important goal of a cleaner and healthier future. There needs to be an open discussion in the council of its benefits. Instead, the proposed ordinance has been sent to languish in the rules committee, where bills infamously go to die.
The ordinance would require all new construction to meet indoor emissions standards through the use of electric heating, cooling, water heating, cooking and clothes drying appliances.
Note that the ordinance does not outright ban construction using gas. Rather, it specifies that indoor air quality must meet a standard that natural gas appliances simply cannot achieve, thus making them incompatible with health. Get the bill out of the rules committee so that the process can move forward with the urgency that the issue demands.
Don Macica, Edgewater