Cubs Owner the Ricketts family “sweetened the pot Wednesday in an apparent attempt to prod” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel into “siding with the team in the dispute over Wrigley Field signage that’s holding up" a $300M plan to renovate the ballpark, according to Fran Spielman of the CHICAGO SUN-TIMES. The Ricketts family announced that it has “signed a letter of intent with Chicago Athletic Clubs to open a 40,000-square-foot ‘state-of-the-art’ athletic club in the boutique Sheraton hotel the family hopes to build on the northwest corner of Clark and Addison.” The hotel is part of a $500M "development in limbo because of the dispute between the Cubs and the rooftops over signage inside the ballpark.” Cubs Chair Tom Ricketts in a statement said, “All of this can happen if we can reach a common-sense solution that allows us to run our business.” But Spielman writes if the health club announcement was “supposed to be a pressure tactic, it failed miserably with Emanuel.” A source said, “It didn’t work when the Cubs were demanding public financing and it won’t work now” (CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, 3/7). In Chicago, Danny Ecker reported locally owned Chicago Athletic Clubs will invest $5M and "lease two floors of the hotel development" (CHICAGOBUSINESS.com, 3/6).
