Daley Way Doesn't Save The Day For Homeless Shelter

But, made a few of his buddies richer and destroyed a self sufficient homeless shelter along the way. Nothing new around here and the country will get used to seeing Obama's identical liberal pipe dreams, boondoggles and expensive shell games fail as well, only on a larger scale, much larger.

Daley's clout deal puts homeless shelter in the red

:: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Politics:

It was supposed to be a quintessential City Hall deal.

"Help the homeless. Remove an eyesore from a booming neighborhood.

And help Mayor Daley’s pal build a multi-million-dollar condo development.

The deal cost Chicago taxpayers at least $13.5 million. But it hasn’t worked out as planned:

One of the city’s oldest homeless shelters left its crumbling home in Greektown for a new $25 million, state-of-the-art building. But the deal left the homeless shelter on the verge of bankruptcy, desperate to raise millions of dollars to continue its 100-year-old mission.

So the charity — the Chicago Christian Industrial League — hired someone to raise money: Illinois First Lady Patti Blagojevich. But that hasn’t worked out, either. She’s raised little, if any, money since she started four months ago. And her job has gotten tougher since her husband’s arrest on corruption charges last month.

And the mayor’s friend? Developer Michael Marchese and his partners, including indicted businessman William F. Cellini, built their luxury condo development where the homeless shelter once stood. But the recession has hurt them. They’ve sold just half the 212 condos.

And as the tough economic times send more people to homeless shelters, the Christian Industrial League is so broke it can’t afford to operate its new building, which sits half-empty in Lawndale, one of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods.

“We are not currently planning on bankruptcy, but it would be irresponsible not to talk about it,” said Paul Camenisch, the charity’s vice president.

He doesn’t blame the Daley administration for pushing the charity into an expensive new home so the mayor’s friend could build his condo development.

“They may have led us to do this,” Camenisch said, “but I’m not sure it was their responsibility to prevent it.”

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