Cubs threaten to speed sign
The Cubs threatened Thursday to take immediate advantage of the authority the City Council gave them to put up a see-through sign in right field.
The Cubs threatened Thursday to take immediate advantage of the authority the City Council gave them to put up a 650-square foot seethrough sign in right field at Wrigley Field if rooftop club owners won’t agree not to sue to block the stadium renovation project.
Cubs spokesman Julian Green issued the thinly veiled threat after the Commission on Chicago Landmarks authorized a Class L property tax break for the 99-year-old stadium that could save the team $8 million over 12 years.
Team attorneys claim Wrigley is now valued at $19.2 million and $32 million, including the land beneath the stadium.
“We will not start renovations to the ballpark until we resolve the remaining issues with the rooftops. However, that does not preclude us from putting up signs in the outfield,” Green said. “The video board [in left field] will obviously take some time [because of the need to develop video programming]. But the right field sign — that one we could move forward with pretty quickly.”
So that’s the hammer hanging over the heads of rooftop club owners, whose 17 percent revenue-sharing agreement with the Cubs has 10 more years to run?
“It’s not about leverage. It’s about generating revenue as soon as possible. Putting up that sign in right field would give us the ability to generate revenue now,” Green said.
Cubs Vice President Mike Lufrano added, “The jumbo-tron does require moving the walls back. The right field sign you could conceivably put inside the ballpark without moving the wall back . . . We hope [for] a global solution that everybody is happy with. But if there were a time when we realized it wasn’t going to happen, approval for those signs has been granted and you could put up some of those signs.”
Ryan McLaughlin, a spokes- man for rooftop club owners, said: “There are ongoing conversations taking place with our contractual partners. We believe a solution exists that does not block our views.”
This week, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Wrigleyville community leaders opened the door to resolving the dispute between the Cubs and the rooftops by allowing a deck that would hover over and darken Sheffield Avenue.
Sources said a rooftop club owner first suggested the Sheffield deck — and the right-field sign behind it — but it was confined to just a couple of buildings. That would require the right-field wall to be extended outward at least twice as much as previously planned — taking out a lane of traffic, instead of just a sidewalk.
The Cubs countered with a much larger deck that would extend for most of the block but only if the rooftops agreed not to sue to block the outfield signs that would largely bankroll the $500 million project.