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NEED TRANSPARENCY
This project is supposed to be a public/private initiative with each entity covering half of the total $67 million cost (“Scheels Sports Park development on track,” Dec. 14). According to Ryan McCrady, president and CEO of the Springfield Sangamon Growth Alliance, “Money from the banks isn’t needed by the developers yet; drawing on funds that have been committed by the banks too soon would incur unnecessary interest charges.”
Using this logic, the developer should not use any private funding until the city of Springfield has spent its share of the $67 million in order to save unnecessary interest charges. It is time for the City Council to do their due diligence and not pay one dime until the developer can show proof of financing for their share of the project. The developer should be providing receipts for work already completed, and the council should insist on complete transparency on all transactions by this developer, including paying prevailing wage.
Bill Baskett
Springfield
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NEED SELECTIVITY
Regarding the Scheels Sports Park, Ward 3 Ald. Roy Williams observed, “We do a whole lot for this developer that we don’t do for other developers.” He’s right, and I think it’s important to explore it further to determine value guidance for future developer requests.
A new grocery or hardware store mostly cannibalizes customers from established stores with little or no gain to the overall economy. Housing projects, especially downtown, are often risky with predictable downside and developers seek TIF dollars to cover their losses. Strip malls rarely bring in impact business. Nonprofits do not generate appreciable revenue.
Local business transacted in Springfield is money spent from resident to resident. Tax revenue and payroll dollars that chain stores leave behind also originates from residents. Conversely, state of Illinois payroll and manufacturing bring money here from elsewhere.
Scheels Sports Park will draw a steady stream of outsiders spending hundreds of dollars while visiting. Tax revenue from hotels, restaurants, gas stations and souvenir sales will boom. Wages from new jobs will expand. Locally owned businesses will share in the harvest of outside money.
That is the key to understanding why Scheels Sports Park is so valuable and why its developer gets better consideration. Almost all the money spent at or near this expanded athletic facility will be new money – money brought here from somewhere else and left behind.
Regarding Ald. Williams’ observation, I suggest Springfield should be openly selective and demanding about which developers they do more for. Springfield should reserve its best effort for projects where it stands to gain the most in return.
John Levalley
Springfield
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CHRISTMAS IN VIETNAM
On upper Tu Do Street in downtown Saigon – Christmas Eve, 1967 – me and my fellow 7th Air Force Information Radio Newsmen gathered together at Papa San John’s Pizza Pagoda to celebrate the holidays and the Christmas truce that was turning out to be nothing more than a ruse by the Viet Cong in biding their time to prepare for what U.S. intelligence expected to be the great Tet Offensive of 1968. But we didn’t let that stop us from indulging in libations while singing Christmas carols of the secular kind – out of respect for Papa San’s religion, Buddhism.
We began the celebration by singing the famous holiday tune that began with “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas…,” made popular by the terrific, prolific, holiday crooner Bing Crosby, although it was highly unlikely to snow in tropical Saigon, where it hadn’t done so since the beginning of time.
Dreams seemed to be the theme of the party, like another song we sang that was also recorded by Crosby in 1943, at the height of World War II. Its heart-tugging lyrics that ended with “I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams” may have been written with the soldiers of that war in mind, thinking perhaps they’d be singing it too in their foxholes on Christmas Eve. Those who fought in the so-called “forgotten war” of Korea may have sung it, too. And our brethren GIs in Vietnam might be singing it now while hunkered down on the dangerous front lines, far away from where we were in the friendly confines of a Vietnamese pizzeria and bar in relatively safe Saigon on this magical night when Christ was born. Even Papa San John, a devout Buddhist, sang along since it was a secular song.
Mike Shepherd
New Berlin
This article appears in Project Censored 2023.
