So let me get this straight, the streets of Chicago are like Hong Kong and Morgan Stanley is like the British Empire. As far as anyone who’s alive and over ten years old is concerned, a 75 year lease is for all practical purposes a sale.
This is not like selling the naming rights to a public building or selling a public parking lot. It’s not even like leasing a toll road, where drivers have alternative routes. A sitting mayor and aldermen actually sold our city streets! The very streets where you I live and have no choice but to park our vehicles everyday. If this doesn’t stretch the outside of the envelope for privatization of public assets, I don’t know what does?
It’s difficult to wrap your mind around how outrageous this transaction really is. Let me help you. Why doesn’t Mayor Daley lease or sell an entire neighborhood? It’s the exact same thing. I’d like to sell Hyde Park. We could even throw in the Museum of Science and Industry and the University of Chicago.
I’m certain that we could entice a large private equity firm or perhaps the Chinese government would entertain my Hyde Park lease proposal. I’d bet that the Chinese would consider Hyde Park’s lake front, real estate potential and the tax revenue from existing businesses. I’m also confident that the Chinese would pay dearly for possession of one of our country’s finer private colleges. Could we entice the Chinese to cough up say $40 billion for this real estate and intellectual capital? If this deal works, the possibilities are endless. We could resolve Mayor Daley’s fiscal budget deficits well into the next decade, which may or may not, cover the remainder of his term in office.