The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
Days after Pat Quinn lost the November election, Chicago’s busiest film studio asked the lame-duck governor for a hefty state grant to buy industrial land around its West Side campus, where “Chicago Fire” and other TV shows and movies are produced.
Three weeks before Quinn left office, Cinespace Chicago Film Studios got a $10 million check from the cash-strapped state of Illinois.
The check’s been cashed. But the studio has yet to buy any land, and the owners of six properties listed in the studio’s grant application say they have no plans to sell to Cinespace or anyone else. Nor does a seventh property appear to be for sale
There's more:
It has deposited millions of dollars from the state grants with Chicago’s Belmont Bank & Trust, a small, neighborhood bank with powerful political connections that has given the studio millions of dollars in loans.
The bank’s president, attorney James J. Banks, has helped numerous real estate clients win zoning changes at City Hall, where his uncle, former Ald. William J.P. Banks (36th), was chairman of the City Council’s zoning committee. For more than two decades, James Banks has been on the Illinois Tollway board and was reappointed by Quinn. The bank’s board also includes former state Sen. James DeLeo, D-Chicago, and businessman Fred B. Barbara, a friend of former Mayor Richard M. Daley who struck it rich hauling garbage for City Hall.
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