Aldermen are set on Tuesday take a second pass at selling hundreds of vacant city-owned lots, after an earlier attempt stalled amid a debate over aldermanic privilege.

Lawyers for former Ald. Bob Fioretti (2) said on Monday that petitions to re-elect Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx showed a “pattern of fraud” in a longshot challenge to get the incumbent thrown off the ballot before she faces Fioretti and two other Democratic challengers in the March 17 primary.

Two aldermen will ask their colleagues on Tuesday to kick off 2020 by cracking down on noise made by motorcycles along north Lake Shore Drive and throughout the city.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot tapped approximately equal numbers of men and women to serve on citywide boards and commissions and to head up city departments in 2019, according to an analysis by The Daily Line. 

Lightfoot made 46 appointments that must be confirmed by aldermen between her inauguration in May and the final City Council meeting of 2019. They were nearly equally divided between white appointees and people of color.

With the holiday season over, elections officials began sorting through dozens of challenges that will determine who makes the March 17 primary ballot.

County officials signed off on approximately $76,000 in extra grants for community organizations to conduct outreach programs for the 2020 Census, boosting the $1.4 million officials paid out in November after widening the application criteria.

Chicago will see a raft of new ethics laws take effect at the start of 2020, as federal investigations shadow City Hall. But nonprofit organizations will get a three-month reprieve before new rules requiring them to register as lobbyists take effect amid an outcry about the impact of the new regulations.

While most people spent the last days of 2019 preparing for holiday celebrations or buying last-minute gifts, Rosa Escareno, the commissioner of the city’s department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, had a warning for Chicago’s nascent legal pot industry.

Members of the Chicago City Council may have breathed a sigh of relief after approving a 2020 budget that closed an $838 million budget deficit without imposing a massive property tax hike.

County leaders will launch a working group next year to find an answer to the question that roiled city and state government this week: did the state’s cannabis legalization law go far enough to help the people who have been harmed by the War on Drugs?

Two advisory councils will help shape the construction of two megadevelopments planned to transform the South Loop and the North Branch of the Chicago River, Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced Thursday. 

Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi will relax requirements for next year’s property tax appeals process after his staffers rebuffed an overwhelming majority of the thousands of property owners who claimed the rookie assessor had over-valued their buildings.

Kaegi hit homeowners and landlords in Cook County’s 13 north-suburban townships with a double-punch this year when his valuations team hiked their assessments — sometimes more than doubling them — and then rejected most of their pleas for reductions. Kaegi’s office delivered its last round of appeals decisions on Dec. 7.

A plan to turn the vacant Von Humboldt Elementary School into an 107-unit apartment complex including five townhomes geared toward educators won the endorsement of a key city panel Thursday after the developer promised to set aside half of the units for low- and moderate-income residents.

Ald. Daniel La Spata (1) asked the Plan Commission to endorse the three-year-old proposal from Newark, N.J.-based developer RBH Group that would transform the shuttered Logan Square elementary school, which has been vacant since it was one of 49 schools closed in 2013 as part of the largest mass school closure in the country’s modern history.

If approved by the City Council’s Zoning Committee and the full City Council, the $21 million project would mark the second time one of the closed schools would be transformed into apartments. In Uptown, the former Stewart Elementary School is now the Stewart School Lofts, where rent starts at $1,700 per month for studios and nearly $4,000 for three-bedroom units, according to online listings.

La Spata said he pressed the developer to ensure that the former school could be turned into homes for those being priced out of Logan Square so they can stay in the community, and to ensure that the apartments would be affordable for the long term.

“We can create diverse, affordable communities that thrive,” La Spata told the commission.

Under the city’s Affordable Housing Requirements ordinance, a minimum of 15 percent of the units — or 16 units — would have to be set aside for Chicagoans earning 60 percent of the area’s median income, which is approximately $54,000 for a family of four.

Housing Department Comm. Marisa Novara praised the developer for agreeing to go beyond the minimum requirements. 

Two of the 52 affordable units would be earmarked for those earning 30 percent of the area’s median income and 23 units would be set aside for those earning 50 percent of the area’s median income. The remaining 27 units are set to be rented to those earning the area’s median income, but Novara said she had a commitment from the developer to make 25 of those units more affordable using resources from the Chicago Housing Authority and the city’s Low Income Housing Trust Fund.

RBH Group's Ron Beit said the firm worked hard to win the approval of city officials.

"We are excited to bring the former Von Humboldt school back to life with teachers,” Beit wrote in a statement. “We will create affordable, workforce, and market-rate housing marketed to educators in the community, as well as a fresh food market, community space, and a life-long learning center.”

The plan also calls for 53 parking spaces and “classroom, community, commercial and office uses,” according to documents submitted to the Chicago Planning Department.

The City Council’s Zoning Committee could consider the project at its next meeting, set for Jan. 14.

The Plan Commission also gave the green light to plans (O2017-7021) for a 43-story tower with up to 300 units, first-floor retail and 75 parking spaces at 906 W. Randolph St. in the West Loop. Sixty units will be set aside for low- and moderate-income residents as part of the $215 million development, as required by the Affordable requirements Ordinance.

In addition, developer Related Midwest will pay $4.87 million into the Neighborhood Opportunity Fund for permission to build a project that is more dense and taller than the city’s rules allow.

Other projects advanced Thursday by the Plan Commission include:

• LF#737 — A proposal by Francis Campise and James Jann to build a four-story, 36-unit building at 3728 N. Lake Shore Drive with 36 parking spaces in the 46th Ward.


• O2019-4107 — A proposal by Michael Haney of Newcastle Limited to build a 12-story, 91-unit development at 1200 N. State Parkway with 33 parking spaces and first-floor retail. The $72 million project did not require a zoning change, so none of the units are required to be affordable, officials said.


• LF#738 — A proposal by the Chicago Park District to build a new “water landing” to “provide access to Lake Michigan for non-motorized water craft” at 8500 South Green Bay Avenue in Steelworkers Park the 10th Ward.


• O2019-6832 — A proposal to build a two-story food packaging and cold storage facility for Cougle, a 146-year-old poultry processor at 2801 S. Ashland Ave. in the 25th Ward. Cougle is moving from the Fulton Market District.


• O2019-308  — A proposal by John Novak to allow for construction of an accessory parking lot at Elston Logan Plaza, 2700-18 N. Elston Ave., in the 32nd Ward.


• O2019-2661 — A proposal by John Pellouchoud to build four buildings comprising 28 townhomes at 1225-35 W. School St. in the 44th Ward. The developer will pay $600,000 into the Affordable Housing Opportunity Fund rather than build on-site affordable units.


• O2019-1406 — A proposal by Related Midwest to lay the groundwork for a new CTA Red Line station at 101-213 W. Roosevelt Road in the 25th Ward. The station was proposed as part of Related’s $7 billion The 78 megadevelopment.

Cook County officials want to referee the dust-up that blew open on Wednesday between city and state leaders over the coming legalization of cannabis in Illinois.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and her allies on the City Council rebuffed an effort to prohibit the sale of pot in Chicago until July 1, withstanding an impassioned effort by several African American aldermen to impose a six-month delay to ensure that firms owned by people who were hurt by drug laws can profit from the sale of cannabis.