Mayor Brandon Johnson wants to spend $50 million to build a new Greyhound station bankrolled over the next two years by funds siphoned from the Canal-Congress tax increment financing district, a surprise plan that blindsided the local alderperson.
Ald. Bill Conway (34th) said he discovered the mayor’s plan to solve the 4-year-old Greyhound station problem by chance while perusing TIF reports distributed to City Council members outlining projects in their wards.
He stumbled across a line item in the Canal-Congress TIF that read, “Greyhound station,” and earmarked $35 million for that purpose next year and $15 million in 2027.
The line item does not specify where the new city-owned station would be located. Nor has anyone in the mayor’s office or the Chicago Department of Transportation discussed the project with Conway.
“It’s shocking. … It makes me wonder if I find this by looking on my own, what else is the mayor’s office hiding that will cost taxpayers more?” Conway said.
Even before the Greyhound project, Johnson was planning to take $71.9 million out of the Canal-Congress TIF to support the record $1 billion TIF surplus he is using to rescue the Chicago Public Schools and bankroll the new contract with the Chicago Teachers Union that was the driving force behind his election.
That will leave less money available to bankroll hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure projects needed to prepare the vacant South Loop parcel known as The 78 for a long-awaited development that now includes the plan by Joe Mansueto to spend $650 million of his own money to bankroll a 22,000-seat, soccer-specific stadium. Mansueto is the billionaire owner of the Chicago Fire FC.
The Canal-Congress and Roosevelt-Clark TIFs are adjacent to each other.
“Because they touch, the money gets ported. But the TIF surplus will prevent some of that from happening,” Conway said.
What concerns Conway is the fact that the mayor’s office “thinks it’s OK to spend $50 million” on a new Greyhound station “at a time when we’re asking for more in taxes and fees amid rising costs and not implementing some of the efficiencies identified in the Ernst & Young report.”
That report discusses cost-cutting and revenue-raising ideas to help stabilize city finances.
“I am not opposed to the Greyhound station. But it’s worth a conversation about whether we should be giving a private equity subsidiary taxpayer cash at this moment,” Conway said. The property where the Greyhound station currently sits is owned by Twenty Lake Holdings, the real estate division of Alden Global Capital.
Conway doesn’t know where Johnson intends to build the new city-owned station, but he has a good idea.
“I am guessing that they allocated $50 million to buy the property and then fix it up or build a new station on the property,” the alderperson said. “Without knowing more, it’s hard to know if $50 million is the right number or too high a number.”
Conway acknowledged that it is “important that we have multimodal transportation” in Chicago. But he said he wants to know how the city intends to solve what he called “significant safety problems at that Greyhound station.”
“Me finding out about the existence of this project without any consultation,” Conway said, “goes to the collaboration and trust issues that exist with this administration.”
The mayor’s office had no immediate comment about the $50 million earmarked for a new Greyhound station.
When Conway raised the issue during City Council budget hearings Tuesday, Planning and Development Commissioner Ciere Boatright offered to “bring all of the responsible parties together … to explain where the project is at the very early stages so that you’re fully briefed on why … this is moving forward and why it’s a priority just to ensure that the transportation mode is still protected.”
The Greyhound station debacle began four years ago when the bus operation was sold to Germany-based FlixBus while the terminals were sold to another buyer. Greyhound has been losing its stations across the nation as its leases end, catching some cities off guard.