Well this doesn't seem good (via WBEZ):
Seven years ago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Gov. Bruce Rauner invited dignitaries to a 62-acre plot of land in the South Loop and offered a bold promise: The long-vacant property would be transformed, with a high-tech research facility that would give a massive economic boost to the city of Chicago.
The University of Illinois would operate the proposed $285 million facility, dubbed the Discovery Partners Institute. It would sit on an acre south of Roosevelt Road along the east bank of the Chicago River donated by the property owner, Nadhmi Shakir Auchi, an Iraqi British billionaire who has long been denied entry to the United States as a result of past criminal convictions.
But the university pulled the plug in October on the planned research hub at the sprawling site that has sat vacant for decades and is now being marketed as The 78. The U. of I. said it would turn its vision to the south and become part of a quantum computing research park that Gov. JB Pritzker wants to build on a vacant, 300-acre site at East 79th Street and South DuSable Lake Shore Drive, once occupied by U.S. Steel.
That decision means Illinois taxpayers are now out of more than $30 million, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show.
And the losses for taxpayers still could grow, sources say, to $40 million.
This property has been this biggest quagmire for the neighborhood, government, and numerous ambitious business people. Our first post back from taking a bit of a hiatus pondered the question "The 78: Will 2025 Finally be the Year?" So far the answer has been an expensive, resounding no!
This giant empty piece of land that is so visible from so many vantage points across the Sloop is tantalizing to dream about the possibilities. But so far, it's just been an expensive, bureaucratic nightmare with big dreams but little return on investment.
