A former Chicago planning official testified Thursday that a millionaire developer charged with bribery angrily told her they did not need to discuss a city plan affecting his property because he had “a deal with the alderman.”
A former Chicago planning official testified Thursday that a millionaire developer charged with bribery angrily told her they did not need to discuss a city plan affecting his property because he had "a deal with the alderman." "He was very irate and really kind of repeating himself in an angry way," said Nancy Kiernan, the government’s leadoff witness at the bribery trial of developer Calvin Boender. Kiernan said she phoned Boender in early 2004 as a courtesy to discuss a proposal to create a planned manufacturing district in an area that included his 50-acre Galewood Yards tract on Chicago’s West Side where he was hoping to build homes, townhomes, condos and a theater. Boender, 55, is charged with bribing former Alderman Isaac Carothers to push through a zoning change for the property, switching it from industrial to residential and commercial and clearing the way for the developer to make millions of dollars in the process. The creation of a planned manufacturing district would have made it very hard for Boender to get that zoning change. "He got very upset and said he didn’t know who I was and didn’t need to know who I was because he had made a deal with the alderman," Kiernan said. Boender is also charged with making illegal campaign contributions to Carothers’ aunt who was running for Congress, getting an associate to lie to a grand jury and drawing up a fake document to make it look as if Carothers had been billed for $37,000 in improvements to his home — doors, windows, painting and air conditioning. In reality, Boender footed the bill for the improvements. Boender’s defense attorney Robert Sanger suggested in his opening statement on Wednesday that the free home improvements had nothing to do with Carothers’ support of the rezoning. He portrayed Boender as determined to remove "a scar on the face of Chicago" by transforming the desolate and abandoned Galewood Yards into a pleasant place where families could own homes. Carothers has pleaded guilty in the case and is cooperating with the government. Kiernan said that after she learned that Boender was opposed to creating a PMD that would encompass the Galewood Yards neighborhood she briefed Mayor Richard M. Daley on the situation. She testified that Daley’s reply was short and to the point: "PMD him." But the PMD was never approved and in the end a compromise was worked out. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.
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