Mayor Johnson asks department heads to model layoff scenarios in a bid to close the city's budget gap. And I'll talk with Crane's residential real estate reporter Dennis Rodkin about news from the local housing market. This building is legend. Of course, this week we're marking the anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire in 1871 on October 8, 1871. That day, this cottage was one of the few buildings in the Burt District to survive. I'm Amy Gooth, and this is Crane's Daily Jist, for Thursday, October 10. When I dive deeper into the topics you've heard here, read the full stories and get access to all of Crane's award-winning coverage with a Crane's Chicago Business subscription. Crane's Daily Jist listeners can get 20% off a one-year Crane's Chicago Business digital subscription by visiting ChicagoBusiness.com/Gist and using promo code Jist at checkout. Once again, to redeem this offer, visit ChicagoBusiness.com/Gist and enter code Jist to get this deal while it lasts. I'm joined by Crane's residential real estate reporter Dennis Rodkin, here to talk about news of the week from the local housing market. Hey, Dennis, how's it going? I'm doing well, Amy. How are you? I'm well. Thanks. Let's start with a couple of newsy items and then talk about some houses. Let's start with the story that you covered. A judge has ordered the city into talks over alleged housing failures for people with disabilities. Tell me about this. You know, this is the latest turn in a case that has been going on since 2018. Access Living, which is a disabled rights organization based in Chicago since 2018, has been suing the city over the city's failure to inspect affordable housing that is built to make sure that the affordable housing complies with accessibility requirements. We talked about this a couple of times when the case took other turns. The latest is that a federal judge said, "You guys need to sit down and negotiate this. This was late September. You guys need to negotiate over this. And if you can't make any progress, you need to come to me in early November, and we may be headed for a jury trial." What Access Living argues is that the city as a recipient of federal funding that then provides to affordable housing developers needs to be ensuring that the affordable housing that is built has barrier-free entry and all the other things that make a property considered accessible. The city says, "No, we don't have to do that. We're essentially just a conduit of the funds. We're not the developer of this housing. We're just getting the federal funds, something like $2 billion in the past 25 years and funneling it to developers of affordable housing. Over time, the US Justice Department has said, and most recently, this judge said, "You know, that's kind of a dodge because the federal funding comes with stipulations that there will be certain numbers of units, a certain percentage of the units that are built will be accessible, and you can't just say, "Well, we're not actually spending the money." What this judge wrote is, "If that were true, then anybody managing a federal program would be able to say, "Yeah, the federal rules don't apply to us. For the stories I've done on this, the city has not responded because of ongoing litigation. Access Living's attorney speaks to me and says, "You know, we just really don't understand why the city won't come to the table and fix this." What Access Living claims is that Chicago is short about 3,500 units of accessible affordable housing because of these policies the city has, and that there are then disabled people who are living in affordable housing and have to call emergency services because they can't get out given the barriers that they encounter. There are people who go homeless because they can't get into affordable housing. They can't physically enter or exit affordable housing that is not built to be disabled to access. In November, we may be talking about this again, there may be another step. I'd love to hear the city's side of this, but as I said, they never want to talk about it. But what we do know is that in Los Angeles, there was an agreement in 2016 in a similar case and in the years since, Los Angeles has built 1,200 out of an agreed upon 4,000 disabled units. And again, Chicago is supposedly 3,500 short, Los Angeles was 4,000 short and is catching up by building about 1,200. This may be what we see as ordered of Chicago, but we don't yet know, of course, until a judge makes an order or there's a jury trial, which looks like it might be the next step. Well, we will revisit that when you know more. Talk to me now about how record home prices just went up in Arlington Heights and South Barrington. On the same day, Tuesday, October 1, in Arlington Heights, there was a household for 3.1 million and just last month we were talking about how it was rare for things to sell over the mid-tues in Arlington Heights. There were a couple of houses in 2024, sold in the mid-tues and the low to mid-tues and now the new record is 3.1. And in South Barrington, a new construction house sold for 5.3 million, which is a new record there. It's interesting that these two towns both saw record sales on the same day, but the real news here is the upper-end market is still going strong. The sales at that level are cruising along while down at ordinary people's prices. We're not seeing the same traffic. Sales at 1.5 million and up in the Chicago area in the past 12 months are up 20% from the year before, while at 1.5 million and below, sales are flat or down slightly. They're down 0.9%, so I call that flat. It's not very changed because if you're buying in the 3.1, 5.3 or even 1.5 million dollar range, you're not as concerned about interest rates and where they're going. You're very likely paying cash. You might be pulling it out of your stock portfolio, but interest rates are not really giving you the jitters. So people in the market at 1.5 million or below are waiting to see what happens, but people with a whole lot of money aren't having to wait. So they're going ahead and buying in South Barrington at 5.3 million in Arlington Heights at 3.1 million. It's a very interesting sort of bifurcated market. Yeah, it definitely is. I have said this every year that we've done the podcast, right? I'm always so interested to see the full year data to kind of get the story of the year. This was kind of so far anyway, has been such a theme this year of one part of the market behaving one way and the higher end of the market behaving completely differently. But I suppose it's always been that way, but it has felt like such a stark difference this year. We know that at all prices, sales are way, way down. Can't yet say whether it'll be lower than 2007, 2000, we don't know, but it is going to be the lowest number of sales in a very long time. We don't know till we get the total how far back that goes, but up at the upper end, still chugging along. Yeah, indeed. All right, well, let's talk about some houses. Let's start with a blufftop mansion looking to land Glencoe's highest home sale price in five years. This came on the market at $10.9 million on Monday. There have only been two other sales in the past decade in Glencoe at $10 million or more. One of those I put in the story, but you kind of have to disqualify it because it was the sale of the Hoover estate, which was about 12 acres included a house, but it was bought by a developer who was going to make a subdivision, then ended up in another developer's hands. They've started 23 homes on that site. It was the sale of a $10 million house, but it doesn't actually count as the purchase of a $10 million house if you see what I mean. The only other one on record going for over $10 million in Glencoe is 10 years ago when the CEO of Groupon paid over $19 million for a biggest state. If it sells near its asking price, it's angling to be the highest price sale in Glencoe in a decade. We've seen a couple of others shoot to go over $10 million, neither of them made it. There was one that was listed at $18 million, cut the price to $12, went off the market on sold, and there was another that listed at $13.8 million and sold for about half that, $7.25 just in August. It's going to be interesting to see, this is a really pretty house. It's right on the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan has waterfront property, but doesn't have a beach or stairs down there. The listing agent told me that she feels confident you could get the permits to do it. I'm not sure why the present owners haven't done it. They've had the property since 1998, and in 2000, they essentially built a new house. They kept some of the old, but they had a really great architect, Tony Grunsfeld, completely rebuild the house. The listing agent told me it really doesn't count as rehab, it counts as rebuilding, nearly building a new house. Really beautiful. When you see the pictures of the front door, big, two-story wall of glass, and you see all the way through to the big two-story wall of glass on the back of the house that frames views of the water. You see the water from bedrooms and other rooms. It's really a very nice, modernist house from around 2000. It's on a couple of acres, and again, they're asking $10.9 million. I didn't get any comment from the sellers, though I asked. They've moved to Maryland, according to where they get the tax bill, but it's a really nice early 2000s, modernist house by a very good architect since deceased died in 2011. We'll see. Maybe they get there 10.9, or possibly, like a couple of these others, they end up having to drop the price. Indeed. Well, that's another one. We will put a pin in that and revisit when you know more. It's not often that you get BYOB in a headline connected to residential real estate, but that is the case. Only in this case, it means bring your own boat. Talk to me about this place in New Buffalo. This one is amazing. New Buffalo has this sort of harbor complex as the Galene River empties out into Lake Michigan. In the 2010s, there was a development called Peninsula Drive. It's about a dozen houses on this long, thin pencil that comes out to the Galene River. Right at the end of that, Peninsula is the house we're talking about. The woman who bought it several years ago told me that she didn't think she needed a boat. She just wanted to sit out at the end of the peninsula, watch all the boats, et cetera. But as soon as she got there, as soon as she started living there, she realized you're going to live on Lake Michigan. We're going to need a bigger boat. We're going to need a big 48-foot boat. The fortunate thing about this house is you can tie up your boat right next door. Essentially, you walk the distance, the width of a sidewalk as if you're walking to your car, but it's your 48-foot boat. Her boat is captained, but it's there. She says, at any moment, if she has guests coming in, they fly to O'Hare, and she boats over to Chicago, goes through the locks, ties up, tells them, "Just take a cab to this point on the Chicago River, picks them up, and then boats back," which I think would be the coolest way to arrive at a home. Okay. I have just changed my standards for getting picked up at the airport. I have all new -- the bar is now much higher. Yeah. I want to be picked up by a 48-foot boat, too. But we've only talked about the boat. We need to talk about the house, because she's not selling the boat. You'd have to buy your own or bring your own boat to this property. It's really interesting. So, as I said, it's right there on the tip of the peninsula. It has a huge deck right out, essentially, over the Galene River. She said that one of the great things is people, as they boat by, are waving at you and talking with you. It also has a deck up on the top of the house, the fourth floor, where you can see out over Lake Michigan. She says you sometimes see the skyline of Chicago look up into -- you know, New Buffalo is a very pretty town, especially right there where all that harbor development has happened and there are condos and boats and this whole sort of maritime complex. And then you go inside. Again, this house is built on a narrow peninsula that's at the house is narrow, which means many rooms have windows on two sides. So you could feel the breeze passing through, but you also can look out into the harbor or look out toward the lake. And as I said, it's four stories high. There's three stories of living. She described the house as upside down, because the bedrooms are below the main living rooms, which are on the third floor, because you want to have the best views. So living, dining, kitchen, a really nice covered porch that looks out toward Lake Michigan all on the third floor and then go up another floor and you've got the deck with an outdoor shower. It's a great location. I can't imagine leaving, but she's getting married and moving to upstate New York. So she's got this on the market for just under 7.4 million. And then of course, you've got to add to that the cost of the boat that you bring to the house. Again, I have totally changed my standards for getting picked up at the airport. But that's the rule now. It has to be my boat. Okay. Well, let's see. If you fly into hair, I'm not sure how I'm going to pick you up by boat, Amy. Let's think. I will take a cab to the nearest lakefront spot and the boat shall be there. That's the way it needs to go now. I love that. Or somewhere on the Displains River. I have a kayak. I could pick you up on the Displains River. I feel like that would just be this ramshackle operation of luggage and kayaks. Not quite the same as a 48 foot boat. Not the same as a 48 foot boat. True. All right. Well, let's talk about some historic houses. I could not wait to talk about this one with you. I was so excited as soon as I saw this headline, the Bronzeville home where Mayor Harold Washington lived as a child is up for sale. I say this every episode, but folks, go to ChicagoBusiness.com, check out the photos. This is such an interesting house. And it really, it seems like it needs someone to rescue it from disrepair. It does need someone to rescue it from disrepair. The nice thing is this is an old gray stone. So the exterior looks great. Interior has a lot of historical finishes, but you need utilities. You need climate control. You need to bring a lot of it back. And I hope somebody does because it has some pretty interesting history. So Harold Washington, who most people know was elected mayor of Chicago in 1983 with Chicago's first black mayor, you go all the way back to 1928. He's six years old. His parents have split up. His mom is apparently going to go pursue a career in music. His dad has these four children, two go to live with grandparents and two, Harold and another brother are going to live with the dad, Roy. And he moves into part of this gray stone. The gray stone is owned by a widowed friend of Roy Washington. It's on, I don't think we said it's on King Drive, which at the time would have been called South Parkway, and originally it was called Grand Boulevard. But now we think of it as King Drive. So Roy, Harold and Edward Washington move into part of this gray stone. And then Roy and Edward spend most of their time at a boarding school in Milwaukee. But when they're home, this is their home for the next five years. They move in in 1928, and then in 1933 they move to an apartment on Vincennes. And the way we know this that Harold Washington lived there, because they're not even leasing the property. They're moving in with friends, is that Dempsey Travis, one of the biographers of Harold Washington, wrote a long book shortly after Washington died, where he had sat and talked with Washington many times. And he describes this little six year old boy looking out the window, his second story bedroom window, and watching across what again at the time was called South Parkway, is this famous old nightclub, the Grand Terrace nightclub, where all the employees, all the musicians are black. But most of the clientele is white, white people in fancy clothes arriving by limousine to go to these performances at the Grand Terrace Ballroom. And little six year old Harold Washington is looking out the windows at these people arriving. And again, lives there till he's about 11. I don't know when the family friend sold the house. I do know that the people who own it now appear to have owned it for about 50 years. It's owned by a trust, and I couldn't get a lot of information, the real estate agent listing it didn't want to divulge too much, but it's a family trust based in Skokie. And apparently they're the third generation who've owned this for something like 50 years. It's not in great shape inside, it's beautiful inside. How can I say both of those things? I know both things are true. Yeah, exactly. Unbelievable features, beautiful in the living room, beautiful fireplace with flanking book cases, much larger than you see. I mean, we're used to seeing that in a bungalow. This is much grander. And then you go into the dining room, and there's all this built in woodwork. And then above the wanes coating, there are these murals of trees still intact. There's a checkerboard marble floor in the foyer. There's this beautiful wood staircase, pocket doors, really wonderful features. Most of them in bad shape. For example, this gorgeous staircase has in the listing photos. There's caution tape saying, you know, don't use these stairs. The house needs a lot of work. It needs utilities, needs plumbing, needs a new kitchen, needs bathrooms. They're asking $715,000, and the listing agent said that they've estimated it's about $300,000 of work that the house needs could be more, but they've estimated about 300, which gets you to a little over a million million dollars on King Drive. Well, as a matter of fact, you and I have talked about this, there have been, there was a group of three new construction graystones also on King Drive, a few black south that all sold for over 1.1 million. This was in 2023 and early 24. So the idea is you could get your house to that same level with the total expense being about the same as that asking with the total expense being about the same as those sale prices, the difference being that you have a place with some serious history. I mean, not only is this a building that dates to 1894 and it has all these features, but Harold Washington's childhood home, right? I love the idea that, you know, little six year old Harold Washington kind of playing around there and being in that space and watching this nightclub and all the things there. Yeah, you know, when I picture Harold Washington, I really picture his smile and I can picture a little six year old boy with that same smile. Totally. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Another property that you recently wrote about also has a lot of history attached to it. And that is this Lincoln Park cottage that survived the great Chicago fire. Tell me what's going on with it. This building is legend. So of course, this week, we're marking the anniversary of the great Chicago fire in 1871 on October 8th, 1871. That day, this cottage was one of the few buildings in the Burt District to survive. Thousands of buildings burned down. The Bellinger cottage, as it's known, was saved. It was the honeymoon cottage of a police officer. I've never been able to find his wife's name, but they have, they've just built this house and he wants to protect it. The fire is coming. And so he rips up the wood sidewalk and rips out the wood fence to, you know, essentially create a barrier that a fire can't cross. What he doesn't do, but what legend says he did, is he go down to the basement and get barrels of cider and pour them on the roof. So the roof is wet enough to repel fire. That legend attached to the house almost immediately, nobody seems to know how. But about 30 years later, Mrs. Bellinger said, no, that did not happen. She said there was enough water in the nearby ditches for us to wet the roof. But somehow this still sticks. So if you walk past the Bellinger cottage at the right time, somebody's sure to tell you, oh, you know how they saved this one was by pouring cider on the roof. Well, this came up for sale in 2022 sold for $2.25 million. At the time it was, it was a little problematic because so that original cottage was pretty shallow, pretty small. It's like two rooms deep. Some people in 2005 made a great big addition. And somehow I don't know how they determined that the kitchen would be in the basement. Okay. So when you come into this house, you come up from the sidewalk, a full flight of stairs to the living room, dining room, down a flight and a half to the basement for the kitchen. That's how they sold it 2022 for $2.25 million. I just went back this week because of the anniversary of the fire invited by the new owners to see what they've done and they solved this problem. They did a lot of other things. There's original stained glass, there's original brick ceiling beams. A lot of that had been preserved and they've touched up the paint and that sort of thing, but they've made it more livable. What they told me when they bought it was we're just going to put the kitchen up in the floor where the living and dining room are, which again are a full flight of stairs above the sidewalk. Well they ended up talking to an architect who said, if you do that, you've got nothing but kitchen up in that elevated first floor. So they've pulled it up. It used to be a full flight of stairs down to the basement, really sort of two half-lights down to the basement of the kitchen. They've pulled it up in sort of a half-light of stairs below the kitchen and this you really have to see the pictures to make sense of. The solution that the architect came up with is you come across the living room and dining room and there's essentially a screen from floor to waste level that is your connection to the kitchen down below. So it's like an overlook but it's safe, you know, there's wood. So the rooms are connected the way they are in sort of a split-level house where your kitchen might be on a different level from the living room but not remote from it. You know, I mean it's a little elaborate what I'm describing but what it comes down to is this sort of icon of Chicago history was made more livable by their rehab. It's really nice. It looks really good inside. It looks really, really good outside and what the sellers told me is that their daughters love to run out and talk to like tour guides or people who come by to look at the house and say, you know, aren't the little daughters, elementary school-aged daughters. You know, our house survived the fire and that sort of thing. So they're living in this piece of history and they've made it more livable not only for themselves but for down the line. I love that and I love that the kids know about the history of the house and have enthusiasm for sharing that. That's fun. Well how about another historic house? Okay. Okay, I guess. Sorry. Talking about this Victorian in Elgin that has taken a price cut after being on the market for about a year. This is one we talked about about a year ago when it came on the market beautiful, absolutely extraordinary house up on the bluff in Elgin on the west side of the Fox River looking down over downtown Elgin which is on the east side of the Fox River. Really spectacular with the turret and multiple shingle patterns and dormers and very busy multiple colors really sort of that kind of confection that you think of as the great Victorian house. It was built in 1899. The family that built in 1899 sold it in the mid fifties about 1955 to the family that is now selling it. So it's only had two owners in all of its time. They put it on the market in 2023 at $650,000. People loved looking at this. It's like looking at a box of candy. Sure. However, nobody bought it. It's been on the market for about 13 months. Price came down about $50,000. It's just below $600,000 now. Which might make it work because this house doesn't have air conditioning. And again, it hasn't been sold since 1955. Kitchen is dated. Some updates would be needed. I'm eager to see somebody buy it and bring it back. But for the time being, you can at least walk by and look at the purple and white and the turret and the porches and the shingles. It's a remarkable place. Right. The exterior is always so fun with all of their colorful details and all of that. Oh, yeah. And this goes all the way with that. This goes all in on that for sure. All right. Well, thanks so much, Dennis. I will meet you back here this time next week, and we'll talk about more from the housing market. Let's do that, Amy. Coming up, President Biden announces a plan to fast track lead pipe replacement in the US. We'll talk about that and more right after this. Thanks for listening to Crayne's Daily Gist. Remember, we provide a daily news brief that drops right in your inbox. It's our newsletter called the Crayne's Morning 10. They're the 10 stories that will fuel a smarter workday. To subscribe, visit ChicagoBusiness.com/Morning10. This is the Crayne's Daily Gist with Amy Guth. Mayor Brandon Johnson's team has told city department leaders to prepare to cull their staff budgets through what his office has described as an exercise in case layoffs are needed to close the city's $982 million 2025 budget shortfall. Crayne's Justin Lawrence reported that in order to stave off deep personnel cuts and avoid a fight with organized labor, Mayor Johnson is weighing whether to push for a large property tax increase that would go back on a campaign promise, but may prove easier than committing to the staff reductions necessary to balance the books and garner the required 26 votes in the city council to approve his spending plan. Lawrence noted that Johnson delayed rolling out his plan until October 30th and has yet to choose the path that will secure the legislative math to approve a budget in a council that is increasingly willing to buck the fifth floor and push their own agenda. John Robertson, a senior aide to Johnson, told commissioners the mayor would still like to avoid layoffs, but they may become necessary as the city looks to find an additional $75 million in savings, according to sources familiar with the situation. Lawrence noted that while the spending reductions could involve cuts that don't involve layoffs, finding significant savings is difficult without affecting personnel. Johnson leaders were asked to identify potential cuts and justify their decisions in a memo due later this week. The reductions described on Tuesday go beyond the hiring freeze that Johnson announced in September. And as Lawrence noted, it's unclear how many city workers would be laid off or whether Johnson would instead push for other cuts, including extending the hiring freeze, eliminating unfilled vacancies and mandating furloughs. While now, departments have not been explicitly told, however, to prepare for layoffs, instead being directed to find between 3% and 5% reductions in their budgets that could come from program reductions or other types of cost-saving measures. Lawrence noted that going deeper would be difficult without affecting personnel. And Lawrence also noted that the cost-cutting move is likely to put Johnson, a former organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union, at odds with influential city unions as he heads into his second budget season without a clear or easy path to get the 26 votes necessary to approve the city's annual spending plan before December 31st. A spokesperson for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents over 3,000 city workers across departments, said in a statement the union will quote "appose a budget plan that includes employee layoffs or furloughs." The statement continued by saying quote, "The city of Chicago has reduced frontline staffing in recent years and now has imposed a hiring freeze. Further cuts to frontline staffing would hurt the city's services that residents need." Also saying quote, "We're ready to work cooperatively toward a budget plan that keeps Chicago working." Murray Children's Hospital tops the list of best pediatric hospitals in the state again this year, followed by UChicago Medicine's Comer Children's Hospital. U.S. News and World Report also ranked Lurie among the top 10 in the nation in two specialties, number seven in neurosciences and number 10 in neonatology. It's also the only hospital in Illinois ranked by U.S. News in all 11 listed specialties. Raines John Asland noted in reporting that no other Illinois hospitals were ranked in at least one specialty in the 2024-25 list. Overall, 88 children's hospitals in the nation were ranked in at least one. Asland also noted that for the first time, U.S. News rankings include the specialty of behavioral health care, recognizing the crisis-level impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors on young people's mental health. According to a release for the 2024-25 rankings, U.S. News looked at data from 108 children's hospitals and surveyed thousands of pediatric specialists in 11 specialties. In a separate ranking last week by Newsweek, Lurie was also named the ninth-best hospital in the world. Comer Children's Hospital has been recognized as the second-best pediatric hospital in the state for four years running. As the number 17 pediatric hospital in the Midwest, U.S. Chicago Medicine said it was pleased to have risen three spots in the latest rankings. Lurie was ranked third in the Midwest. And as Asland further noted in reporting, Comer is recognized nationally in four specialties, including the New Behavioral Health Specialty, Cancer, Neurology and Neurosurgery, as well as Urology. Crane's Danny Ecker reported that a lender trying to foreclose on an office complex in rolling meadows is now marketing the property for sale, offering to help a new owner breathe new life into it amid severely weakened demand for workspace. Ecker reported that Realto Capital has tapped real estate services firm Transwestern to seek a buyer for the continental towers complex at 1701 Gulf Road in the Northwest suburb, according to a marketing flyer. The lender-controlled offering comes more than a year after the owner of the nearly 910,000-square-foot property was hit with a foreclosure lawsuit alleging it defaulted on its nearly $85 million mortgage tied to the complex. Ecker further noted that Realto is hunting for a path forward for the property, hoping to recover as much of its outstanding mortgage balance as it can as the foreclosure process moves along. The so-called special servicer is representing bondholders in the loan, which was packaged with other mortgages and sold off to commercial mortgage-backed securities investors. And as Ecker pointed out in his reporting, it's a case like many others across the local office market, which is rife with distress as remote work fuels a space shedding movement among companies and elevated interest rates handcuff landlords with maturing debt. Against that backdrop, some new investors are starting to step up to buy office properties at steep discounts to their pre-pandemic values, betting that they can add value by landing new tenants or converting office space into other uses. And at continental towers, Realto is willing to stick around to help. Ecker noted that marketing materials play up the ability for a buyer to assume the existing mortgage that a joint venture, a Philadelphia-based Rubenstein partners and Chicago-based Glenstar borrowed against the property to finance its nearly $122 million purchase of the complex in 2018. The debt comes with a 4.75% interest rate, which is likely far lower than what a buyer would be able to secure with a new loan today. And it also comes with a September, 2028 loan maturity date. The flyer said that Realto is also "willing to work with prospective buyers to further customize a loan that is appropriate for this acquisition." And as Ecker noted, that loan assumption could be a potential sweetener for buyers at a time when many banks and institutional investors are wary of backing large-scale office purchases. But substantial vacancy in the property, which is 59% occupied today, still makes it a tough sell, and one that will likely require loan bondholders to take a financial haircut, at least on paper. There's no asking price listed for the 42-year-old property, which includes three office buildings and a more than 67,000-square-foot hub building connecting them. A sale could potentially resolve the pending foreclosure complaint without Realto having to take title to the property through a judicial sale. Transwestern, which is also the court-appointed receiver for the complex, frames it as an opportunity to capitalize on $28.5 million in renovations that Rubenstein and Glenstar have completed since 2019 on tenant amenities and common areas. According to loan data compiled by Bloomberg, Continental Towers generated $2.1 million in net cash flow in 2022, its last full year of operation before the foreclosure lawsuit was filed. That was roughly half of the owner's debt service for the year, according to loan data. Verizon is the property's largest tenant, with a lease for almost 160,000 square feet that expires in April of 2028, according to Bloomberg. Joe Biden announced a plan to replace nearly all lead pipes in the country over the next 10 years, pledging an additional $2.6 billion from the Environmental Protection Agency to improve drinking water during a visit to the election battleground state of Wisconsin. Bloomberg noted in reporting that the plan will fast-track an earlier proposal from the EPA mandating most cities and states to replace their lead pipes, one that carved out an exception for cities with high concentration of such pipes like Chicago. Under the initial proposal, the city would have had more than four decades to replace its lead pipes. The new plan would tighten that window to about two decades. As part of the plan, 49% of the funding will go to disadvantaged communities as grants or principal loan forgiveness. The agency will also unveil the availability of $35 million in competitive grants for reducing lead in drinking water. And as Bloomberg noted in reporting, Biden spoke from Milwaukee, where $30 million to replace lead pipes from his hallmark infrastructure law, is accelerating the timeline for completing the task to a decade from about 60 years, according to the White House. And Bloomberg also noted that Biden used the visit to Wisconsin, one of seven swing states that will determine November's election between Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump to hail the Democratic presidential nominee. Biden said the lead pipe initiative was, quote, "one of the many reasons Kamala and I fought so hard to pass the bipartisan infrastructure law." A measure he said was intended not only to modernize the nation's infrastructure, but also, quote, "to get rid of the God forsaken lead pipes." And he jabbed at Trump without mentioning him directly, and the Republican Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, saying, quote, "There's some folks who don't have any problem leaving people behind, like my predecessor in the White House and his allies in Congress, like your Senator Ron Johnson who voted against it." The president continued, quote, "He calls it a radical agenda." But added, quote, "I don't think there's a damn thing radical about protecting kids from lead poisoning, protecting women from low birth rates, protecting from brain damage." Bloomberg also noted in reporting that the administration is highlighting multi-million dollar investments to finish lead pipe replacements in many other cities within a decade, including Detroit, Pittsburgh, Denver, Akron, and St. Paul. In other cities like Benton Harbor, Michigan and Egerton, Wisconsin, the replacement of all lead pipes has already been completed. EPA Administrator Michael S. Reagan said in a statement, quote, "There has never been more federal funding available to remove lead pipes." Continuing, quote, "And let me just add that investing in our water infrastructure is not only an investment in public health, it's an investment in local economies." His statement continued, quote, "For every $1 billion invested in water infrastructure, we create approximately 15,500 jobs." It's Crane's Daily Just for Now. Check in on our continuous news feed at ChicagoBusiness.com. Thanks so much to today's guest, Crane's residential real estate reporter Dennis Rodkin. You can follow all of our conversations on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to get your audio on demand. Don't forget to subscribe and please rate and review Crane's Daily Just. Our show is produced by Todd Manley at Earsight Studios. I'm Amy Gooth, thanks so much for listening, and I'll meet you right back here next time.
