A 40-year-old Chicago businessman who serves on Mayor Daley's Community Development Commission, making recommendations on every proposal for city tax-increment financing, or TIF -- the multimillion-dollar program Daley has used to build offices, stores, schools and other projects across Chicago, is being examined in the Sun-Times as a possible beneficiary in the building of an endangered homeless shelter.
As one of 15 members of the unpaid city advisory board, David Ariola, who at one time owned the South Loop gym where the mayor once worked out., is on record as having supported the Daley's plan to spend more than $13.5 million to build a $25.2 million homeless shelter for the Chicago Christian Industrial League -- a charity that had sold its longtime home in Greektown to Daley's friend Michael Marchese for a luxury condo development.
It's also the same charity that recently fired the governor's wife, Patti Blagojevich, from her fundraising job.
If the Hired Truck scandal wasn't enough to teach the Daley administration a lesson, perhaps a Hired Builders investigation would do the trick.
And the scandal saga continues.
According to a Sun-Times article published Monday, Ariola's Chicago Realty Co. was eventually hired by the league to oversee construction of the homeless shelter -- a project that has left the league in financial trouble, unable to pay a $10.8 million loan it got to finish the project.
