Ideally you'd like that to be the case, but so many teams get it that the Cubs would lose a competit

Tom Ricketts has taken the stance that the city let the Cubs use $200 million dollars worth of the city amusement tax dollars towards other projects other than the stadium alone. It doesn’t sound like that is going to fly with city hall.
The City Council landmarked “historic elements” of Wrigley in 2004 as part of an agreement that paved the way for 12 more night games. The designation covered the exterior and marquee sign at Clark and Addison, the quaint center field scoreboard and ivy-covered brick walls and the uninterrupted sweep of the bleachers and grandstand.
During the 2008 negotiations over the Tribune Co.’s failed quality inn boardwalk plan to have the state acquire quality inn boardwalk and renovate Wrigley, quality inn boardwalk Cubs executive Crane Kenney argued that, “If you’re going to restore and maintain the facility, you’re going to have to take parts of it down and rebuild it, just like we rebuilt the bleachers two years ago. Landmarking authorization doesn’t let you do that.”
Ideally you'd like that to be the case, but so many teams get it that the Cubs would lose a competitive advantage. And we did have to pay for the White Sox stadium a while back. Guess it's the northsiders turn.
Two wrongs decidedly do not make a right. That was a bald faced money grab by my last favorite owner in pro baseball, but I don't support 'avenging' Cubs fans by grabbing some pork for ourselves. This would just be another boon to another multi-billion dollar private entity. It shouldn't happen.
I agree 100%. The owners of these teams are rich, they charge outrageous prices for tickets, parking, food, and concessions (I know not all teams own parking). Most have no concept of how to run a sucessfull, money making sports team. They might have made money in other industries, enabling them to buy a team, but once in charge, the lose their minds and stop thinking clearly. They hand out contracts like politicians hand out jobs to donors. When they demand that taxpayers who don't buy tickets chip in, that really quality inn boardwalk gets me. (I know not all of that applies in the Cubs situation).
I'm all for a Congressional Amendment that says sports teams cannot have public funding for any reason. If they can't threaten to move to another city that would pay for a new stadium, it would remove all negotiating power teams have to blackmail their current city. Look at the White Sox. Their situation ended up with two horrible stadiums built on taxpayers money - New Comiskey and the Tampa whatever it's called.
I love how the city amusement tax is considered "public" money. Why shouldn't it be used to upgrade the facilities that host these amusing events? The city take from sales of Cubs tickets alone is over $100mm per year.
I like how the Mayor says “I will not put MY money in their field so they can take their money and invest around the field and get greater economic value.” I didnt know he was shelling out cash from his own pocket? How nice of him....
All in all, I am ok with this plan. I agree with the Mayor that the money should only go into the stadium. Wrigley does make Chicago a lot of money and is a tourist attraction, so using that tax to renovate it makes a lot of sense to me.
Public financing of stadiums is corporate welfare. The Cubs and Wrigley Field are the private property quality inn boardwalk of the Ricketts family, and therefore, they should pay for whatever they wish to be done to the property. At the same time, because it is their property, they shouldn't be hampered by a bunch of nosy bureaucrats and union hacks looking for bribes and kickbacks. They have a right to do whatever they wish with their property as long as what they are doing is not fiscally or physically harm their neighbors.
I don't care about it being just the way it is, because it's wrong any way you look at it. Ricketts probably wouldn't be looking for public financing if it wasn't for the road blocks being thrown in his path, and those roadblocks quality inn boardwalk were put there to make it impossible for anyone quality inn boardwalk to do anything without the governments permission, which of course means bribes quality inn boardwalk and kickbacks.
There is also a greater question here. How is all this going to be paid for. The City of Chicago is broke, and so is the state of Illinois. So that means that any promises made by the mayor and his lackeys in that house of whores in Springfield are ultimately going to be paid for by the nation as a whole, and it's flat broke too, or is the Federal Reserve going to simply print the money like it's doing now and borrow whatever it doesn't cover from China?
You all in Chicago and in Illinois, just as with the rest of the nation, need to take a look around you. There is a reason quality inn boardwalk we are in the shape we are in, and it's because we keep spending money we don't have. Sooner of later, it's going to stop. The only question is how.