Wednesday at City Hall, and the Council actually moved things — a bus station, two housing projects, and a crackdown on airbag thieves. That last one passed unanimously, which around here is practically a miracle. If you're just joining us: Chicago's housing pipeline came into this stretch with the big Avondale and McKinley Park developments — plus other proposals around the city — already through a key Council committee, but still waiting on final sign-off. The question was whether that committee momentum would turn into actual zoning authority to build, or just be one more stop on the process train. Chicago Politics and Urbanism Daily. Today — a $19.2 million Greyhound buy, a West Loop tower with a park attached, and why one alderperson still holds the keys. Let's get into it. So start with the Greyhound station — final approval to buy it, $19.2 million in public money. Block Club had this. The city is deciding it should be in the intercity bus real estate business. And good — intercity bus is how people without a car actually leave this city. This hits neighborhoods that don't have O'Hare money; it's not some downtown perk. Sure, but 'preserving intercity bus transportation' is a phrase. Once the city holds the deed, somebody has to tell me what that means in practice. And here's my nag — nineteen million in public dollars, and the Ethics Committee still gives the city an F on development agreements and TIF transparency. Fresh price tag, same gap on who's watching it. Now the airbag thing — Ald. Villegas, 36th Ward, introduced it this spring. Targeting Honda thefts specifically. Say the ward and say the cars, because this is a working-block problem before it's a headline. Unanimous, too. You don't see fifty alders agree on lunch, let alone an ordinance. Villegas gets credit for actually landing one. But a 'crackdown on resellers' is only as real as the enforcement. Who's working it? Right — CPD's running CTA reliability around nine percent and eating north of twenty percent of the city budget. You hand them a new mandate, where are the people to do it? Exactly. And the Matrix study said the problem's partly deployment, not just headcount. New job, same officers, same questions. Then the housing — Avondale rental townhomes replacing a vacant lot, and 215 N. Racine in the West Loop got a DX-16 designation. That's downtown-core zoning on a 29-story tower. DX-16 plus a public park requirement. So I gotta ask — is that park a real community benefit, or the candy that greased one alderperson's vote? That's aldermanic prerogative in miniature, and yeah, it's a fair question. Two approvals in one session is movement. We still don't know if the new upzoning ordinance actually produces buildings. Right, Freemark warned us back in 2013 — values go up, construction doesn't automatically follow. So on Racine: what's the affordable unit count, and who pockets the land-value gain? And it's the second one this week — Avondale and the West Loop both got through the same aldermanic gauntlet. One session isn't a pattern, but it's enough to keep an eye on. And those Avondale townhomes sit right on the California Ave corridor. New density's only car-free if the bus shows up — I still want delivered frequency there, not the schedule on paper. Which brings us back to this: why does one alderperson still feel like they can make or break a project after it's already cleared committee? That's prerogative, and we're putting it on the record today. And it's the same toll booth every one of these wins had to pass through. HUD already flagged it as the thing strangling housing in disinvested wards. The Council moved — but it still moved through the gatekeeper. Neighborhood housing approvals pipeline isn't over. Follow us wherever you're listening, and the next chapter comes to you. Melody Mercado, writing in Block Club Chicago:
Chicago will officially be allowed to purchase the city’s Greyhound bus station, a major step toward preserving the station and intercity bus transportation. The City Council on Wednesday approved a purchasing agreement to buy the bus station at 630 W. Harrison St. for $19.2 million.
Nineteen point two million dollars and the city officially owns a bus station. And before anybody sneers — this is how working people without a car get out of Chicago. Downstate, St. Louis, see your family. That's a neighborhood lifeline. Block Club has it as a 38-to-10 vote, which means ten alderpeople said no. Marty Quinn, 13th Ward, fought it hard in committee — a cash-strapped city buying real estate and now running a bus terminal. And here's the part that should make everybody read the fine print — they also widened the Canal/Congress TIF to take in the terminal, with another 30 million dollars budgeted for repairs that hasn't even gotten its own vote yet. So 19.2 million is the down payment, not the bill. Yeah, and who were they buying it from? Alden Global Capital — the hedge fund. Greyhound's been month-to-month since its lease ran out. So the alternative to the city owning it was a Wall Street landlord deciding whether intercity buses stay in this town. I'll take the public deed. Okay, fair. But 'preserving intercity bus transportation' — I want to know what the city actually does with that deed once it holds it. Owning the building isn't the same as running the service. This one's from Block Club Chicago:
A 29-story apartment high-rise is slated for the West Loop after receiving approval from the City Council on Wednesday. The project being developed by Domus Real Estate Group at 215 N. Racine Ave. was approved for a DX-16 zoning designation, typically reserved for Downtown’s core and synonymous with some of Chicago’s most notable skyscrapers.
DX-16 zoning at 215 North Racine. That's the designation they hang on downtown-core towers, the marquee skyline stuff — and now it's stamped on a West Loop block. Council signed off Wednesday. 347 units, 70 of them affordable at city-set income levels. So say the real number — that's twenty percent. Decent. Not generous, but decent. And here's the thing — the housing pipeline that was sitting in committee actually cleared full Council this week. This one and the Avondale project both. The committee stage isn't where these things died this time. But look how it got there. Ald. Burnett told Block Club the whole thing was delayed because the developer hadn't even bought the land for the public park yet. The park that's required by code — and gets privately managed once it's built. Public to walk in, private to run. That distinction's going to matter the first time somebody gets told they can't be there. Right. And here's my question on the land value — you grant somebody downtown-tower zoning on a 13,000-square-foot lot, that's a huge gift. Who captures that upside? Seventy affordable units, or the developer's rent roll? Here's Ariel Parrella-Aureli at Block Club Chicago:
The approved proposal calls for 105 housing units, with 40 townhomes and 65 apartments, down from a previous proposal of 152 units. The $65 million plan replaces the northernmost apartment building included in the first proposal with 14 three-story townhomes.
A year-plus in the works, and the vacant lot at California and Melrose finally gets the green light — 105 units, $65 million. That's a block that's been a hole in the ground becoming somewhere people actually live. And it shrank to get there — 152 units down to 105. Neighbors pushed on density, parking, traffic, and the developer trimmed before Council ever voted. Forty-seven units shaved off because of parking complaints. That's the toll booth. The project lives, but it lives smaller. Two Council housing approvals in one Wednesday — this and the West Loop tower we just hit. That's movement. The Freemark question is whether approvals turn into actual construction, and we don't know yet. Forty townhomes versus the old plan's apartment-heavy build — that's the compromise shape. Stocking Urban and Macon gave up units to get the win. Here's Block Club Chicago:
A recent analysis of Police Department data by the Sun-Times found there were about 1,200 airbag thefts reported from January through April, compared to about 70 total from 2023-2025, with police suspending many investigations due to lack of evidence.
Twelve hundred airbag thefts January through April. The whole stretch from 2023 to 2025? About seventy. Seventy to twelve hundred — that's an explosion. And it passed unanimously, which on this Council you can count the times that happens on one hand. Villegas, 36th Ward, introduced it this spring — credit to the Sun-Times for crunching the numbers that made the case. Mostly Hondas, mostly working folks waking up to a smashed window and a steering wheel torn open. Picture a Civic in a two-flat driveway, not somebody's Tesla in River North. Here's my hesitation — the ordinance raises fines on resellers. But Block Club notes police have suspended a pile of these investigations for lack of evidence. You can write the tougher penalty; somebody still has to catch the guy with the airbags. Right — who's working the resale shops? A unanimous vote feels good in chambers, but if it lands on a department already stretched, the law's just paper. When a big apartment project clears every city review and still dies because one council member doesn't want it in their ward — what's actually going on, and is that just how Chicago works? Yeah. That has a name: aldermanic prerogative. It's a decades-old informal tradition — not written law — where the full City Council defers to the local alderperson on zoning or licensing decisions in that ward. So one elected official out of fifty can effectively veto what gets built on their turf, no matter what planners, the mayor, or the developer's lawyers say. WTTW showed how much weight that still has in the Lincoln Park fight this week: Sterling Bay's project at 1840 North Marcey sat in limbo for months before it finally cleared Zoning Committee 13-to-nothing and headed to the full Council, all because of a prerogative dispute. Same dynamic almost sank the city's push to legalize coach houses and granny flats citywide. And when that ordinance finally passed unanimously, per WTTW, it still kept each alderperson's ability to block those small accessory dwellings in their own ward. On the civil-rights side, HUD investigators had accused Chicago of letting alderpersons use that veto to block low-income housing in their wards in ways that violated residents' rights — though the Sun-Times reported that probe has since fizzled. So even when the city passes a reform — like legalizing ADUs everywhere — an alderperson can quietly opt their ward out, and the whole thing gets kind of hollow? Exactly — and now that tension is moving to Springfield too. Governor Pritzker's proposed BUILD plan would shift some zoning authority away from local governments entirely, and it's getting real pushback from Chicago neighborhoods that want to keep local control. Watch whether Mayor Johnson can actually get a City Council majority to formally rein in prerogative on housing votes — or whether every reform keeps showing up with an aldermanic escape hatch baked in. Got thoughts on today’s stories, a tip we should chase, or a correction we need to make? Send us a note anytime at chicagodailyfix at lantern podcasts dot com.
What we’re watching next: City Council still has to approve any additional 30 million dollars budgeted for Greyhound station repairs, and the airbag-resale ordinance takes effect later this month.
You’ll find links to every story from today’s briefing in the show notes. If you want the closer read on any of them, that’s where to start. That’s Chicago Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.