Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Wednesday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

“Motorola Solutions, a leading supplier of public safety communications devices, announced Tuesday it would follow the lead of other high-profile local companies and relocate its corporate headquarters – and 800 jobs – to Chicago,” the Tribune reports.

“With this move, Motorola Solutions not only returns to its Chicago roots, but the company is doubling down on Chicago’s future,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement.

Gee, that sounds familiar. Let’s take a look.


Sept. 1, 2015: “Sprint is doubling down on its commitment to Chicago.”
August 20, 2015: “Rahm Emanuel plans to ‘double down’ on winning future NFL drafts, the mayor said during an appearance Thursday on WSCR-AM 670.”
April 14, 2015: “In Chicago, we are doubling down on bridging the financial education gap from the classroom to the kitchen table.” (Actually, that was from Arne Duncan, John Rogers Kurt Summers and Barbara Byrd-Bennett, but same thing.)
March 12, 2015: “As the mayor said, we should be doubling down on mass transit investments, not cutting.”
October 8, 2014: “Mayor Rahm Emanuel indicated Wednesday he’s ready to double down on the Great Chicago Fire festival.”
July 21, 2013: “The new program represents a doubling down by the city on efforts to expand the number of CNG cabs in service.”
November 21, 2012: “The Bulls are doubling down on the Near West Side.” (He even has some reporters doing it.)
June 20, 2012: “One of the mayor’s favorite terms is ‘doubling down’ on Chicago, which explains why he was smiling when Huron did just that.”
May 13, 2012: “We are doubling down on investments at O’Hare Airport.”
April 26, 2012: “While other states have cut back, the city of Chicago is doubling down on our children.”
There’s more, but that’s all I had time to look up this morning.
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Back to the Trib:
“Willemien Kets, professor of managerial economics and decision sciences at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, said the trend will continue as long as millennials want to live in the city and companies want to hire millennials.”
This is an example of newspaper folks feeling like they need to contact an expert to tell them something really super obvious, like, um, as long as companies want to hire millenials, they, um, will. It’s one of those conventions that helps build the structure of what is really just a facsimile of reporting.
And here’s where it turns really weird:
“While the move to the city makes sense for companies interested in attracting a younger workforce, Kets says it may be a bit shortsighted. At some point, millennials will want to have children and could very well end up in the suburbs, turning them into commuters, or perhaps prompting another corporate exodus out of Chicago.”
There’s a lot going on there, including the presumption that tech-savvy professionals will abandon the city once (if) they have children – and then that companies will follow them. What about the generation after millennials? Won’t companies want to stay in the city to attract them? And would Kets say now that companies that moved to the suburbs were shortsighted because they are now moving back? And what of all the experts who explained those moves to the suburbs decades ago? Was everyone wrong?
More interesting to me is this:

Emanuel continues to aggressively woo suburban firms, reaching out to CEOs and influential investors in local corporations, including Warren Buffett. He has touted the arrival of nearly two-dozen suburban operations or headquarters since February 2012, when he unveiled his economic growth plan, which trumpeted the need for regional cooperation. Some of those firms received state or city tax-break packages.
In March 2012, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development issued its study of the 21-county tri-state area, which called intraregional business attraction efforts “petty and destructive.”
In the global competition to attract business and talent, regions that collaborate to establish a brand, develop industry hubs, streamline transportation, foster a cultural scene and revitalize neighborhoods have a competitive edge, experts say . . .
[G]reater Chicago’s tepid growth rate is outpaced by a number of metropolitan areas with cohesive regional strategies. Denver, for instance, ranked No. 6 in economic performance among the nation’s 100 largest metros since its pre-recession peak, while Chicago was No. 77, according to Brookings Institution data.

I hate the suburbs, and wouldn’t mind seeing them dry up. But “victories” for Rahm’s ego are not the same as productive economic moves that are good for everyone – and not necessarily good for the city if the result is simply displacing people who are already here. Go read the whole thing.
Raining, Pouring
“Morton Salt plans to close its longtime packaging and warehouse facility on North Elston Avenue next month, the company announced Tuesday,” the Tribune reports.
I’d rather have Morton than Motorola.
Nabisco Mobility
“The upcoming elimination of 600 jobs from the Nabisco Bakery at 73rd Street and Kedzie Avenue in Chicago Lawn will likely have a devastating effect on many Chicago families. Workers are waiting to hear which jobs will be eliminated in the latest chapter in an exodus of factory jobs from the South Side, according to a new piece by the Chicago Reporter,” Chicagoist notes.
“The positions will be lost to Salinas, Mexico, where Deerfield-based Mondelez International is spending $130 million to upgrade a facility.”
And where the mayor in Salinas is apparently doubling down.
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For those scoring at home, that leaves net jobs gained on today’s items at 177 – and the biggest losers are blacks in North Lawndale, not whites in Schaumburg.
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See also: Nabisco Plant Worker Asks Emanuel, Obama To Save Chicago Jobs.
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Fantasy Fix: Don’t Panic
Week 1 winners and losers.
Skateboarding Championships In Chicago
Rahm probably had nothing to do with this one. But I’d rather have this than the NFL draft. It’ll probably cost us less, too.
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BeachBook

Posted by The Beachwood Reporter on Wednesday, September 16, 2015

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MSNBC cashing in on Trump too.

Posted by The Beachwood Reporter on Tuesday, September 15, 2015

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“[T]he top 100 ranked players enter 330 winning lineups per day, and the top 10 players combine to win an average of 873…

Posted by The Beachwood Reporter on Tuesday, September 15, 2015

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Posted by The Beachwood Reporter on Tuesday, September 15, 2015

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Posted by The Beachwood Reporter on Tuesday, September 15, 2015

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Posted by The Beachwood Reporter on Tuesday, September 15, 2015

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Posted by The Beachwood Reporter on Tuesday, September 15, 2015

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TweetWood
A sampling.


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The Beachwood Tip Line: Make it rain, make it pour.

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Posted on September 16, 2015