Good By Old Wrigley Field, Hello To A New Wrigley Field

Say good by to historic Wrigley as it enters the modern age with a $500,000,000 upgrade.
From the Chicago Sun Times:  With a warning from local Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) to live up to their many promises, the Cubs got the go-ahead Wednesday to rebuild 99-year-old Wrigley Field and develop the land around it after years of political strikeouts.

The City Council unanimously approved the $500 million development — primarily bankrolled by a video scoreboard in left field and a see-through sign in right — paving the way for the five-year construction project to begin as soon as the regular season ends.....

After months in Emanuel’s doghouse, Ricketts abruptly ended his multi-year quest for a public subsidy.

He offered to go it alone — and build a $200 million hotel development on the McDonald’s property he purchased across the street from the stadium — provided the city lift restrictions on outfield signs and night games and opens Sheffield for street fairs on game days.

The five-year project includes a top-to-bottom makeover of the vintage ballpark that will begin with spacious new clubhouses and training facilities and include new concourses, washrooms, concessions and restoration of Wrigley’s historic exterior.

It includes: a 175-room hotel with a 40,000-square-foot health club, 74 parking spaces, advertising on two sides and a crown rising 117 feet above ground; a six-story office building with advertising on the south and west faces and a clock tower rising to a height of 117 feet; an open-air plaza with seven ad-bearing steel towers and a four-screen digital advertising board that would be turned off between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. and a pedestrian bridge connecting the hotel and plaza.

There would be 35,000 square feet of ads around the hotel, plaza and Captain Morgan Club.

http://www.suntimes.com/21506165-761/city-council-finally-oks-cubs-plan-for-wrigley-field.html

I've been to Wrigley a couple of times and was never impressed.  Little protection from the sun, stinking bathrooms and a very poor sound system.

But it is tradition an if the owner wants to pay for it himself, let him- sounds like he is creating more higher paying blue collar jobs in Chicago than Obama and Obamaite, Mayor Emmanuel.

I just wonder, after it is finished, how much the owners had to pay off the politicians of Chicago and Illinois to get the project done.