I’ll spare you the lengthy preamble, and instead direct you to read what I wrote yesterday on this subject – it’s got your background, and my frustration.
Everyone up to speed on what has happened, how it’s been resolved, and why it would be ridiculous for the Wrigley Field renovation/expansion plan not to be presented at the Landmarks Commission meeting on Thursday?
Good. The Wrigley Field renovation/expansion plan will not be presented at the Landmarks Commission meeting on Thursday.
Despite the Cubs’ efforts to clear up any misunderstanding emanating from the bullpen relocation plan, and to stay on the track they thought they were on after working with the City for months on a revised renovation plan, the Cubs will not get their day at the Commission this Thursday. Wrigley Field does not appear on this week’s agenda, so the Cubs will have to wait. Consider their wrist slapped, and then some.
Danny Ecker reports, thankfully, that the Cubs are now angling to have Wrigley considered at a special session of the Commission later this month so that they can still break ground on the new clubhouse in mid-July (rather than waiting for the next Commission meeting, which wouldn’t be until July). Maybe, come that time, everything is approved, all proceeds as hoped, and this will just be another crazy story to recount in a few years when we talk about how absurd the process of trying to renovate this ballpark has been.
Or maybe, like we’ve seen again and again, delays beget problems beget fights beget more delays. The longer it takes to get that first shovel in the ground, the more risk there is that something else will come up and cause the next snafu.
I tend to think it’s embarrassing – for both the Cubs and the City, mind you – that they could not get this revision considered on Thursday. Take a couple weeks, do whatever you need to do, and consider it then.
(And then we get to kvetch about the impending rooftop legal process, and wonder whether that’ll mark the next delay.)