From Orland Park, press analysis of a kind Ramsey taxpayers might like to see in the local coverage here:
If we put up $62 million to construct a luxury apartment building and you put up $1 million, are we partners?
We are if the “we” is the village of Orland Park and “you” is Flaherty and Collins Properties, a developer based in Indianapolis.
After weeks of weaving and dodging about the financial details of the proposed Ninety7Fifty on the Park project, a key to the village’s redevelopment plan to create a “new downtown,” the village finally revealed the specifics last week.
But how it did so was somewhat odd and obtuse and served to increase our uneasiness over this project’s financing. There was an ill-prepared news conference that was overly technical, with no explanatory material handed out until after it was over.
[...] The village board intends to vote on the financing package at its Sept. 6 meeting — only a week after the open house and just three weeks after disclosing the financing plan. What’s the rush?
At the core of the deal is a major presumption — there’s a big market out there for luxury apartments for young professionals and empty nesters. If that’s true, Orland Park’s sizable wager will pay off.
But any serious market miscalculation will mean serious problems. Orland Park will be the de facto owner/landlord of a half-empty apartment building, and the storefronts at ground level will have vacancies — meaning the rental income critical to paying off bond debt will not be sufficient.
And we’d feel a lot better if Flaherty and Collins’ didn’t have a record of forming shell companies to further limit its exposure to financial risk. It builds and operates housing developments, and if they fail — as they have at least three times — the shell company goes into bankruptcy but the parent company is protected.
Orland Park has no shell to protect its taxpayers. This plan reflects both the village’s willingness to borrow many millions, and developer’s unwillingness to put up much money at all.
[image added]
The flim-flam's there, but is it sizzle without the steak? In a somewhat recent long phone conversation with the mayor, he mentioned the financial demands on the city where expansion of tax base is hoped for to alleviate things. One of his remarks was about the payment due on the Norman Castle, it having to be covered out of current general funds, interest and amortization of principal.
Those who may recall, will recall that back when that thing was built, it was said to be needed to catalyze the momentum so that there would be a big boost in other Ramsey Town Center building and the tax base would be miraculously expanded to yield mistletoe and flowers and an end to worry over adequacy of the public fisc.
Now the realistic burden of today's debt service on yesterday's overbuilt thing is being mentioned -- as a cause for more of the same?
These "catalyze the momentum" flim-flaming hand-wavers somehow, while talking fast, look past the fact that you can have downhill momentum as you can have uphill momentum, and the history behind their more of the same argument is pure downhill.
There is much probability literature about the gambler's ruin, doubling the bet when the first bet is lost.
Etc.
___________UPDATE__________
 |
| Image, MetCouncil, circa2005 open house. |
Orland Park officials and Ramsey officials could confer, exchanging ideas about how to make headway against public opposition and to duck entirely a referendum defining collective citizen judgment. Wasn't it Marie Antoinette who, unworried at the time about losing her head, said, "Let them eat cronk?"
___________FURTHER UPDATE____________
Due to the level and intensity of open house interest and citizen commentary, Village of Orland Park will hold a Sept 5 public hearing on their Flaherty-Collins adventure, this link (story plus reader comments).
________________FURTHER UPDATE_____________
There is an orlandpark.patch.com website that has Flaherty-Collins related coverage and attracts substantial reader comment; with one item here excerpted via screenshots [click each to enlarge it to read]. First, a post about process and procedures of town officials in dealing with different press outlets differently (not an apparent problem, thus far, in Ramsey). Our process/procedural problem is how Landform contacts are made by mayor, Wise, and McGlone, and the role of Nelson in things and whether the fiscal importance of the spending levels that are happening in the present council's extension of prior Town Center extravagance should be overseen administratively by no less than the top person, Ulrich, in the city's administrative hierarchy. I think such a step would clarify that city oversight, vs complicity in selling ideas, is at play. When each council member, primarily the named three, think each should directly deal with Darren, and give him orders on behalf of "the will of the council" there is a failure of communication in an orderly and proper way, where chaos and mismanagement becomes all too possible.
That said, next are a few screenshot excerpts from a single article-commentary thread, from The Patch, again if you prefer to read it all there, this link, the first excerpt ending with a distinct distaste of a "done deal" precursor to a publicly staged exhibition (done as if a "done deal" had not previously been reached with only the presentation details delayed and presented in an arguably false light - something many could learn from, in terms of proper vs suspect ways and means):
----------------snip-------------------
Now comments:
----------------snip-------------------
----------------snip-------------------
----------------snip-------------------
Here is another orlandpark.patch.com item, part IV of an interview with Orland Park officials, with links to earlier installments (excerpted below).
Mayor McLaughlin: What’s interesting is a few tenants in there, no doubt located there because it was off of 143rd and LaGrange. But the owners had very reasonable rates too. That was an attraction for them. Now that those tenants, the few that I’ve talked to whom I don’t want to speak for, now they are looking at other sites that make sense for them regardless of the rent. There might be locations for some of these businesses that are better for them, but the rent’s a little higher.[bolding of names in original, link in original, red highlighting added]
Their first attraction to this spot was the rent was so low. Now they are making business decisions that are best for their business. Some I’ve been talking to have had their eyes on sites where it’s like “Why didn’t I think of that before?” It’s a perfect mix with what they’ll be next to. I think a lot of these guys are going to make good business decisions that will be better for them.
But it drives you nuts when people who don’t know the details, haven’t been a part of the discussions, and don’t want to learn the details…
Paul Grimes: And don’t even come to board meetings.
Mayor McLaughlin: Yes and don’t come to board meetings. In that last campaign, none of those guys who ran went to board meetings. In those cases when people are critical without knowing what they’re talking about, it’s frustrating.
This is a very complicated, big project, so it’s easy to find little things and pick them apart or make them negative. This will be a great project I think everyone will be proud of and like Paul said, it’s a feeder. It’s a feeder for a young couple who rent for a while before deciding what to do. Then it would be natural to buy a house in Orland some day.
Then you have the group older than me who are moving out of their bigger houses but still want to stay in Orland. We did a market study. And there’s very few high-end rental apartment complexes anywhere in the southwest area.
Ellen Baer: No comparables.
Mayor Dan McLaughlin: My son got out of Illinois State a couple years ago and a company in Kansas City offered him a job. My wife and I went down with him to look for apartments. Down in Kansas City, there were three of these projects within two miles. They were all like what we’re talking about doing here. A little bit higher rent, but they have a clubhouse, a swimming pool, activities. The one he ended up at had two swimming pools. Social activities at the clubhouse. It’s a completely different idea than what our grandparents thought of an apartment building.
Paul Grimes: That’s the Southside stigma we are wrestling with. But we think this is going to blow it out of the water. There’s nothing like it. There is a market for it and it will support it.
Ellen Baer: You can find successful projects like this in other suburban communities. Oak Park has one with a Trader Joe’s downstairs. A really creative apartment building. Lombard has a few near their mall development that have been really successful. We’ve gone and visited up in Glenview, so we’re certainly aware of what the clientele is.
Paul Grimes: We visited Carmel, Indiana. They have a city center project, which you can go online and look at. A spectacular project. The concept is very similar, a lot of mixed use. Carmel is one of the most affluent cities in the Midwest. And they have apartments as part of their city center development that the city is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in.
When you look around the country and you look at progressive communities that are really high quality places to live, they all have made that step. They all invested or created TIFs, and maybe made decisions that were perceived locally a certain way at the time. There were politics around it, and it changed. They’ve all transitioned probably from sleepy suburban communities to more dynamic gathering places. They all made those decisions.
In Chicagoland, towns like Naperville and some others, or anywhere around the country. There are examples anywhere.
I got my start in city government out on California. And cities out there, they had leadership that wanted to be bedroom communities. But others that are really dynamic places. Irvine, California is pretty spectacular in terms of what they did. The examples abound, so it’s not like Orland is the first ones to do it.
Mayor McLaughlin: I think in addition, some of these communities, I don’t know if they decided to be bedroom communities, or the leadership quite frankly didn’t have the vision. The vision or the willingness to go through the BS we’ve gone through over the last few years.
Paul Grimes: Some get elected to kiss babies, I guess.
That item links to a Carmel Indiana thing, where you can link over to the below screenshot item, and while the footer says 2009 for copyright, and it might not have been updated, but the red added underlining should have Ramsey officials showing a sense of due diligence about ground level vacancy - still vacant; and if not how long did it take to "catalyze restaurant and shop momentum" ground level in the thing, if ever; and were promoter forcasted ground level rent rates drastically reduced to get occupancy? A child could think to ask such questions. McGlone could, (but might prefer having no answer).
That ugly tarted up thing in the middle image looks to have empty ground level, and there was no larger photo. Ditto, this from another page (yo - city savants in the Norman Castle - it is a "Contact Us" page, should that give you any ideas):
 |
| Catalyzed retail emptiness? Impressive? Reassuring? |
______________FURTHER UPDATE_____________
Another reader comment on that Patch thread, a reply to the devcrabgrass hat tip to the referendum seekers in Orland Park:
Andrea Williams
2:55pm on Friday, September 2, 2011
I like the word "raw," but prefer "misfeasance." I've read the IL Municipal Code and think that if this project goes "dark" as you say, not only will the residents of this town be placed in financial peril, but the trustees may not escape personal responsibility for financial mismanagement of public funds on a grand scale. They have a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers and they are walking way out on that proverbial "limb."
I have not heard one person say anything but this project is an enormous financial risk with unconventional financing (with a developer with a history of bankruptcy) that is a potential disaster for the taxpayers. Check out the report prepared by the consultants hired by the trustees to evaluate this project. It is fresh - just published in July. It can be found here: http://www.orland-park.il.us/DocumentView.aspx?DID=3593
Even their own consultants have advised them to re-think this project and have suggested other, more responsible alternatives to moving forward with this plan "as-is."
I agree with just about everything you said but I suspect our Mayor would not. Specifically, he would likely disagree with your suggestion that nothing but good would come from a referendum - he might have to settle for a big honkin' bronze statue for his legacy instead of a "downtown" development.
Along with:
Andrea Williams commented on the article Walking the Transparency Walk on the Triangle Development Plan
"No worries about this story going away. A few of the residents have grabbed on like pitbulls and have vowed to keep a really big light focused on this project. We know how to file FOIA requests and also how to make a lot of noise."
Aptly related to that last comment, Justice Brandeis in a work titled "Other Peoples' Money" in 1914 wrote the famous quote, "Sunshine is the best disinfectant."