Economist.com Cities Guide: Chicago Briefing - November 2005

News this month

Finally

Though the temperature is starting to drop, Chicagoans are feeling particularly warm these days. On October 26th, the Chicago White Sox, the city's southside baseball team, beat the Houston Astros for the fourth straight game to win the 2005 World Series, ending an 88-year championship drought for the city. (Both the White Sox and their northside rivals, the Cubs, have long laboured under supposed curses.) The White Sox last appeared in the World Series in 1959, which they lost. Before that, in 1919, the team was infamously defeated by the St Louis Cardinals after gamblers allegedly bribed several players. This year the White Sox won eight straight playoff games and spent the entire season leading their division.

To celebrate, the city threw a tickertape parade on October 28th. The team's victory boosted not only Chicagoans' spirit, but also its own value: the Sox's owners bought the team in 1981 for $20m; Forbes magazine now estimates its worth at $300m. Long considered the city's second team—the Cubs play in a more attractive stadium and a better part of town—the White Sox and their fans can spend the whole winter meditating on the sweetness of success. Even stores in Wrigleyville, home for Cubs fans, have begun selling White Sox apparel.

No favours from Fawell

The racketeering and fraud trial of George Ryan, a former governor of Illinois, moved testily into its fifth week at the end of October, as prosecutors grilled his former chief of staff and campaign manager, Scott Fawell. Mr Fawell, who is already serving a 6½-year sentence for racketeering, clashed colourfully with prosecutors, despite having been called as their witness.
He agreed to testify against Mr Ryan in order to keep his fiancée, Andrea Coutretsis, a former aide who pleaded guilty to mail fraud and perjury charges, out of prison. Indeed, Mr Fawell himself told a prosecutor from the witness stand that he was “here to help Andrea”. When another prosecutor asked him about Ms Coutretsis, he snarled, “You are just on very bad turf with me.” Despite his clear fondness for Mr Ryan—after his testimony he smiled and waved to everyone in the room he knew, and refused to leave until his former boss returned the wave—he revealed that Mr Ryan leased a building from a friend and doled out campaign money to his family.

O'Hare extension

O’Hare Airport, once the world’s busiest, has fallen behind in recent years, handling fewer travellers as its competitors have modernised and expanded. But things may be looking up. On October 25th, the US Court of Appeals for the Washington circuit, the country’s second-highest federal court, ruled that a $15 billion expansion of O’Hare could proceed. The court had halted construction on September 30th to consider a lawsuit brought by nearby residents, but has consented to let building go ahead while it puzzles over the case. Residents of Bensenville and Elk Grove Village, suburbs in the expansion’s path, as well as a church that owns a nearby graveyard, have opposed the project for decades. The current 440-acre plan would require the city to buy and raze 2,600 homes and 200 businesses and relocate 1,300 tombs.

Once the expansion is finished in 2013, O’Hare should be able to handle 1.2m flights a year, 300,000 more than now. The Federal Aviation Administration projects that the average flight delay will fall from 17 minutes to 5.8 minutes. The plan also calls for reconfigured runways to facilitate take-offs and landings in bad weather, as well as new taxiways and jet bridges (the passageways between the gate and the plane), parking spaces for larger planes, and a new terminal building.

Guilty on all counts

One of Chicago’s strangest criminal trials in recent history ended with a resounding conviction on October 25th. After a trial that lasted four years, Daniel Salley was found guilty of 15 felony charges, including attempted murder and bank robbery. Without help from a lawyer, he claimed that he was the victim of a government conspiracy, that he wanted to confront the police, and that a 2001 audit of his business had somehow given him “superseding” authority to rob banks.

After robbing the same downtown bank twice in a single month, taking more than $240,000, police came to arrest him at his South Side home in August 2001. He shot one of them, Joseph Airhart, in the head; after spending time in a coma, Mr Airhart has never recovered the ability to speak. In court, Mr Salley called himself as the only witness, though he did question several FBI agents who accompanied Mr Airhart, as well as several victims of his robberies. But his strategy failed: in less than two hours, the jury returned guilty verdicts on all counts. He now faces up to a century in jail.

Third man in

During the past year, both Mr Ryan and Richard Daley, Chicago’s current mayor, have found themselves under federal investigation. On October 25th, Rod Blagojevich, the governor of Illinois, joined this dubious club. Federal investigators subpoenaed the records of the state’s Department of Transportation as part of an expanding probe into hiring practices under Mr Blagojevich. That move followed a similar subpoena for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services earlier in October. Prosecutors have asked for records dating back to March 2002, before Mr Blagojevich took office, and the governor has not been personally named in the investigation. But his father-in-law, a Chicago alderman, accused him of trading jobs for campaign contributions—allegations that touched off another investigation, despite the fact that they were later retracted.

Catch if you can

November 2005

Dinosaurs from China

Until April 23rd 2006

This exhibition brings new discoveries from one of the world’s palaeontological hotspots. China's collection of bones and fossils spans 165m years. Highlights include skeletons of Mamenchisaurus, the longest-necked animal in history, and Caudipterix, a feathered dinosaur, and a tableau of a Tuojiangosaurus being attacked by a Monolophosaurus. Other attractions include casts of dinosaur skin, teeth and claws, and a six-foot-long dinosaur leg bone.

The Field Museum, 1400 South Lake Shore Drive. Tel: +1 (312) 922-9410. For more information, visit the exhibition’s website.

More from the Chicago cultural calendar