Tidbits and little nuggets of information.
DevCorp North didn't last a year. The DevCorp North janitors office on Morse is no more. The new building owner has plans and it doesn't include having a bunch of lazy, unsupervised, food stamp collecting fools peeing in the alley.
Looks like DevCorp North is going to need a new Special Service Area commissioner to replace the token Mary. Will DevCorp North do what they have done in the past and find a rubber stamp puppet to fill the void?
The Special Service Area #24 private security is finished and according to Katy Hogan. " It won't be re-newed". She said Special Service Area #24 taxpayers spent $25,000 dollars for the three month trial rent a cop program. All the hoopla about the greatness this security provides, it turned out to be a joke. A real expensive laugh at the taxpayers expense. DevCorp executives are laughing all the way to the bank on this one. Where is the rest of the money being spent that was budgeted for security? There was $34,000 budgeted last year and $55,000 this year. If they spent $25,000 on three months of ???? Yes, that's right, question marks. What did they really do except drive around and waste gas?
Wanting More Information
Brought up and agreed by Katy Hogan at the bloggers talk yesterday was open information for all. Not a select few. The freedom to view documents such as meeting agendas, meeting minutes and annual budgets from our not-for-profits like DevCorp North and Rogers Park Community Council.... but
....Don't look for this to happen anytime soon. Ms. Bares and Ms. Steinbuck seem very happy keeping the public in the dark on what they do with the government money they receive.
Ms. "Know-it-All Katy Hogan showed up to represent the big wigs who were afraid to go head to head with the Hell Hole. Ms. Hogan sits on every known organizations board ( some we don't know ), so, she is as close as we can get to the truth. The Alderman and DevCorp North are notorious for using little meeting sitters. Katy Hogan is one of them. Call her a note-taker if you will. So, here I linked a few stories with dozens and dozens of questions that haven't been answered over the past year by the Special Service Area executives. Dozens and dozens of questions. You can click here to fill in the some of the blanks Ms. SSA Commissioner. Take your time, Ms. Bares has.
If that's too many questions Ms. SSA Comissioner, we can go step by step, one at a time.
1.) Show the taxpayers what the taxpayers spent for the three month, trial security detail on Morse/Clark and Glenwood. Where is the rest of the money being spent that was budgeted for Special Service Area #24 security? That will be a start.
Show us ALL the rent a cop logs We can talk about the door later.
8 comments:
Back to our neighborhood, we have some real issues here.
Re: 1328-32 W. Morse
John posted...
>I heard John sold this building to Mary for $500,000 in 2002. Mary wanted to build condos in the building. It didn't work out for her.
PIN:11-32-114-015 aka 1330 W Morse
JOHN GEROULIS sold the property to MARYANN CARRERO and REBECCA LISCUM on 1/14/2004 $500K, $100K down and a $400 motgage (see CCRD document numbers 0518103004 and 0518103005).
Carrerro and Liscum sold the property to 1328 Morse LLC for $1.2M on 9/1/05 (see CCRD doc 0525514283).
>It didn't work out for her.
It didn’t work out for her in the limited sense that they leverage their initial $100K into a mere $700K in 20 months. Boo hoo.
The property taxes on 1328 Morse are currently being paid by yet another LLC, Rogers Park Investments, LLC whose address is 7415 N Sheridan, the Bach House, probably Rogers Park's most important single architecture. A trust managed by Jane F. Feerer purchased the Bach House at auction for $1,170,000 in March, 2005. For more information on the Bach House, see the article "Frank LLoyd Wright's Bach House Auctioned" on Forum49.
Ms. Feerer is an employee of James N. Pritzker
This is curious. Is the Pritzker Military Library coming to Rogers Park? to Morse or the Bach House or both?
Meanwhile, the Bach House is still endangered. it is a single-family home in an RT4 district. For more information on the threat of RT4, see the article "RT4 in Rogers Park: Slated for In-fill Development" on Forum49. Back in March 2005, Moore told the Tribune he planned to down-zone the Bach House to a single-family home zoning to protect it from tear-dwon. He di not do it, and this idea is not included in Moore's recent zoning map re-write. Moore's public comment period on his proposed zoning maps closes today, Monday, October 31, 2005.
Source: Cook County Recorder of Deeds
Source: Cook County Treasurer
8 minutes of going, going, and Wright house is gone
Chicago Tribune, March 9, 2005
A Frank Lloyd Wright house in Chicago's Rogers Park community was sold at auction Tuesday in eight minutes, after failing to attract a buyer for more than a year.
Frank Diliberto, senior vice president of the Oak Brook-based Inland Real Estate Group, which handled the auction, refused to identify the buyer or the winning bid, but said it was several hundred thousand dollars above the opening bid of $750,000.
About 200 prospective home buyers had toured the 4-bedroom, 3 1/2 bath house at 7415 N. Sheridan Rd.
The winning bidder is not a developer and plans to live in the house, Diliberto said. The new owner does not have plans to develop an adjacent yard, he added.
Possible development of the yard drew ire from Frank Lloyd Wright preservationists who argued any new structure on the property would alter the architect's design.
In February, Ald. Joe Moore (49th) proposed a city ordinance to rezone the property from multifamily housing to single-family homes.
"In this case the plan of the buyer seems to meet perfectly with the desires of the community, which is preservation," Diliberto said.
Pritzker money in the 'hood. I wonder of the other bidders on the Bach House knew they were bidding against a Pritzker.
Correction
A trust managed by Jane F. Feerer purchased the Bach House...
should have been
Jane F. Feerer purchased the Bach House...
Thanks to Cat for the correction.
Maryann Carrero owned the Cobbler's Mall building (AKA 1328-32 W Morse) from 1/14/2004 to 9/1/05. (See Cook County Recorder of Deeds document numbers 0518103004, 0518103005, and 0525514283).
Ms. Carrero's appointment as a Commissioner of the Clark/Morse/Glenwood Special Service Area (SSA #24) was approved by the City Council on 5/5/04, for a term expiring April 1, 2006.
Citizen Gernhardt had to submit a Freedom of Information request to extract a list of the SSA commissioners from DevCorp North. The list provided by DevCorp North from October, 2004 includes Ms. Carrero as a Commissioner. For more information on the SSA, see the "Clark/Morse/Glenwood Special Service Area (SSA 24) documents" on Forum49. For more information on the SSA Commissioners, see the article "Clark-Morse-Glenwood Special Service Area Commissioners" on Forum49.
The post "Questions for my New Neighbor" here on the "Broken Heart" has DevCorp North opening a auxiliary office for the SSA in the Cobbler's Mall building on December 5, 2004.
Ms. Carrero was both an SSA Commissioner and the SSA's landlord from December, 2004 through September, 2005.
Opinions may differ on whether the SSA is good for Rogers Park, but it has clearly been very good for some.
While we're on the subject of SSA Commissioners who are also SSA landlords, let's take a look at Akhil Ahmed, owner of Rogers Park Auto Repair Shop.
Rogers Park Auto Repair Shop Inc. of 6828 N Clark was awarded a no-bid contract as the Official "Storage" Provider for DevCorp North's Special Service Areas (SSA). (The 49th Ward's Department of Streets and Sanitation garage is four blocks away, at 6441 N Ravenswood.)
SSAs are funded by property tax increases. In 2003, Rogers Park Auto Repair Shop Inc. received $350 per month in SSA money. Automatic annual increases were built into the budgets for in both budgets for the Howard SSA and the Clark/Morse/Glenwood SSA, to $400/month in 2004 and $450/month in 2005.
2003 $350/month $4200/year
2004 $400/month $4800/year
2005 $450/month $5400/year
Source: SSA budgets prepared by DevCorp North and distributed as meeting hand-outs.
Rogers Park Auto Repair Shop Inc. contributes regularly to Alderman Joe Moore:
$1,000.00 on 2/18/2003
$500.00 on 8/2/2001
$500.00 on 4/4/2001
$700.00 on 3/7/2000
$500.00 on 11/12/1999
Akhil Ahmed, the owner of Rogers Park Auto Repair Shop Inc., made one of the largest individual contributions ever made to Moore:
$2,500.00 on 5/22/2002
Aqueel Ahmed was in the inaugural batch of Clark-Morse-Glenwood Special Service Area Commissioners approved by the Chicago City Council on 5/5/04, term expiring April 1, 2005. Ahmed was both an SSA Commissioner, SSA landlord, and Moore contributor from May, 2004, to at least April, 2005.
Rana M. Saleem, the President of Rogers Park Auto Repair Shop Inc., is also a Moore contributor:
$500.00 on 6/1/2000
Rogers Park Auto Repair Shop Inc. and its officers have contributed at least $6,200.00 to Alderman Moore since 1999. This technique of supplementing coporate contributions with contributions from corporate officers is a common method for frustrating detection.
Source: Illinois State Board of Elections Campaign Disclosure Search Engine
RP Auto's enthusiasm for Moore seems extravagent until it is viewed in the context of the money going from the SSA to RP Auto.
The $1,000.00 campaign contribution from Rogers Park Auto Repair Shop Inc. to Alderman Moore in 2003 is 24% of the taxpayer money Rogers Park Auto Repair Shop Inc. is to receive from the SSA property taxes in 2003.
Extrapolating that approximately $300/month of SSA money was paid to Rogers Park Auto Repair Shop Inc. in 2002, Aquil Ahmed's $2,500.00 contribution in May of that year to Alderman Moore is about 70% of the taxpayer money Rogers Park Auto Repair Shop Inc. received from the SSA property taxes that year.
Unknown is how much SSA money was transferred to Ahmed for the "build-out" of the SSA storage area. Ahmed used concrete block to make a special space for DevCorp North's tractors, and installed a security door and an overhead door on Clark Street.
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