Seven years ago city officials stood before the people of Pilsen and vowed to save their relatively high-paying local industrial jobs. Their weapon was a TIF, or tax increment financing district, which would provide funding to help build new industries and keep existing ones from closing.
Roughly bounded by 16th Street on the north, Stewart on the east, Western on the west, and the Stevenson on the south, the Pilsen TIF zigzags around the southwest side’s major industrial corridor. According to the city’s preapproval report it’s supposed to protect industries. “The employment data show that while industrial employment within the project area continues to remain overwhelmingly industrial in nature, many jobs are leaving,” the report says. “The maintenance of this industrial job base is critical to the economic well being of the area and to the City.” The report recommends that “where feasible, [the city should] repair and rehabilitate existing industrial buildings in poor condition” and “reuse vacant industrial buildings in serviceable condition for new business or industrial use.”
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Solis says he hasn’t yet decided whether he’ll endorse the project. “The developers told me they want to submit it for zoning approval,” he says. “I told them, ‘You can submit anything you want, but nothing happens unless I end up supporting it.’ And it’s not a done deal until I take it to the wider community and get their reaction.”
Solis says the extra TIF money will be used to rebuild schools, create new parks, and repave sidewalks–things that would be funded by property taxes if those weren’t being siphoned into the TIF. “The best thing I’ve done since becoming alderman is creating that TIF,” he says. “You can imagine all of the things we can do with that money.” He points out that the city would probably have to have spent TIF money to induce a manufacturer to move to the old factory. “Here we have a development that won’t take any TIF financing and it will add money to the TIF,” he says. “I just had a meeting with [schools CEO] Arne Duncan, and we’re going to use some TIF money [to rehab] Benito Juarez High School.”
Afterward they conceded they’re waging a long-shot campaign. “I knew as soon as I saw Cisneros’s name it would be a harder fight. They’re using a prominent Latino to sell it to the community,” says Romero. “Our fears are becoming true. They said, ‘Oh no, don’t worry about the TIF–it’s all about industry, not housing.’ Yeah right, sure.”
