Same old Same Old.... Chicago Style...

  My goodness, I hate it when I'm right.  Before the city hall mantle was passed from Richie Daley to Rahm Emanuel, I proclaimed that Emanuel was "Daley with a more polished edge and a better grasp of the english language at large."  Anyone object?  Anyone?  Anyone?  In a time of great financial strife in our great city, Mayor Emanuel has decided to give DePaul University three hundred million dollars to build themselves an arena near McCormick Place.  Emmanuel's pitch is that this will be the lynch pin of a potentially bustling development designed to lead to the casino that will eventually become the financial panacea that will ultimately sprout money like something out of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale.  Is it me or have you heard this all before?  How many times did we hear Richie Daley step to the podium and spout off about the "next financial pancea."  This is Chicago, the place where the people in the trenches prosper and we tax payers eat the loss time after time.  If Emanuel is going to go all in on a horse, then betting on DePaul is like betting someone's life savings on a glue factory reject.  At the behest of a friend and a die hard Northwestern supporter, I wrote this column.  To him I say, I don't think that DePaul's new arena should keep you up at night.  Looking into my crystal ball, I see a future where people will come to the new Blue Demon arena or whatever they name it and then after a few years of bad basketball the novelty will wear off.  And just like always, our fair mayor (insert name here) will parachute away from the sinking albatross and we taxpayers will get stuck paying for a brand spanking new bastion of reckless capitalism that nobody will quite know what to do with.  Do you honestly think that a casino owner of ANY kind is going to subject himself to the gridlock of Chicago politics to build a Casino on the heels of a basketball program that bascially sacrificied its competitive dignity for a yearly pay day?  I say no.  But I've lived here long enough and I'm a cynical sort.  I'm just wondering who the corporate sponsor for Blue Demon land is going to be?  Will it be another local fat cat with deep pockets or perhaps another nameless corporation looking to showcase their particular brand of whatever it is to the world?  In closing I say this... "plenty of seats available."