BULLS ON FIRST

Proposal to build new practice facility highlights double standard for Cubs

If the Bulls get an extended property tax break to move their practice facility from Deerfield to Chicago and build a $95 million entertainment complex, it will intensify pressure for the city to do something — anything — to help the Cubs.

At least, that’s the way it works in other cities.

“When I worked on the new Yankees stadium, the mayor’s office said, ‘Whatever the Yankees get, the Mets will get.’ That’s the way it’s typically done around the country,” said Chicago-based stadium financing consultant Marc Ganis.

On Wednesday, the Bulls ended weeks of speculation by announcing plans to move their practice facility from the Berto Center in Deerfield to a privately financed facility in Chicago, probably in the shadows of the United Center. Bulls Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf was delighted.

But the announcement was a reminder that Mayor Rahm Emanuel still has some unfinished business with another local sports team.

Until an ill-timed controversy over the conservative politics of Joe Ricketts, patriarch of the billionaire family that owns the Cubs, Emanuel was in the “final stages” of negotiating a $300 million deal to renovate Wrigley Field.

Emanuel was working toward a $150 million variation of the financing scheme he once called a “non-starter”— forfeiting 35 years’ worth of amusement tax growth.

The mayor was also planning to relax Wrigley’s landmark status to allow the Cubs to wring as much as $150 million in advertising and sponsorship revenues out of the stadium.

The changes range from more outfield signage behind the Wrigley bleachers, possibly including a Jumbotron in right field, to street closings on Sheffield and Waveland every game day to make way for money-making street fairs that duplicate the festival atmosphere around Boston’s Fenway Park.

“Chicago is an anomaly in the notion of fairness,” Ganis continued. “It’s a tradition that goes back 50 years. It’s not who you know. It’s, ‘Are you in good standing with the political leadership or not?’ Political favoritism using taxpayer resources is a tradition in Chicago and Illinois.”

Enter Reinsdorf, who has a far better track record of persuading political leaders in Chicago and Illinois government to subsidize his Bulls and White Sox than the Cubs have ever enjoyed.

To coincide with his decision to move the Bulls practice facility from Deerfield to Chicago — and