While debate rages over the future of Lincoln Park Hospital, another hospital, located just a few blocks north on Lincoln, is making headlines of its own. In September we learned that Children's Memorial Hospital had hired U.S. Equities Realty to begin marketing its 6-acre campus at the bustling intersection of Fullerton and Lincoln. Now, Crain's and the Trib are reporting that the hospital is asking the city to create a new tax-increment financing district in order to make an already-attractive development site even sexier. A press release argues that the hospital is "a complex site for redevelopment even in the best of real estate markets," and that the TIF would "promote options for workforce housing, open space, restoration and school improvements." Fair enough, but as numerous commenters on both Crain's and the Trib have observed, TIFs are supposed to be used to spark development in the city's poorest neighborhoods, which certainly doesn't include Lincoln Park/DePaul. Regardless of the "complexity" of the site, it seems likely that Children's Memorial will be sold and redeveloped, whether or not it gets the TIF. That is, unless Dan Balanoff is elected 43rd Alderman. Balanoff, a 30-year-old lawyer, wants to convert the site into a "scaled-down version of Millennium Park."
· Children's Memorial explores TIF for Lincoln Park site [Crain's]
· Official website: The CMH Project [Centennial Garden]
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