This morning I read the story, “City gives felon six-figure grant to open liquor store: Liquor store with ties to felon just the latest problem for a blighted neighborhood that has suffered for decades” by Chicago Tribune reporters David Jackson and Gary Marx. I was struck by two things: the complexity of the issue of economic development in an area that has been under-capitalized for decades, and the large number of databases that the reporters used to tell the story.
I have little to say about the first topic, except to again note its complexity. Presumably it is a good thing to stimulate economic investments by people in their own neighborhoods. Presumably liquor is a popular consumer good for large swaths of Chicagoans (as a recovering alcoholic, I can attest to that). Presumably there are many convicted felons who live in neighborhoods all over Chicago. And presumably there are many gangs all over this city who engage in illegal activities. The issues of addiction, incarceration, and gangs are not isolated to the neighborhood referenced in the story, and I think that drilling down into a specific example of these layered issues, without an examination of the root causes, can be problematic.
Having said that, the story is scrupulously reported and fascinating in its detail, and that’s what I want to cover here. In reading the story, I can just see the databases behind it. The story is not presented as “data journalism”, which has been a hot and growing specialty and a field in which I took part for some time, but it is data, and it is journalism.
Small Business Improvement Fund (SBIF) program grants
“Officials knew the Convenience For You store was coming — in fact, the city gave it $105,000 in tax increment financing grants.”
A simple search of the City’s data portal for the address of the business reveals these grants. Here’s the description for this data type provided by the City:
Small Business Improvement Fund (SBIF) program grants made since 2001. SBIF uses Tax Increment Financing (TIF) revenues to help owners of commercial and industrial properties within specific TIF districts to repair or remodel their facilities for their own business or on behalf of tenants. For more info, go to http://bit.ly/p91J7T.
Unfortunately, there was an error when saving this view. Here’s an embed of all the data:
Small Business Improvement Fund (SBIF) Grant Agreements
Cook County Criminal Court Records
Actually, the new liquor store was bankrolled and launched by convicted drug dealer Frederick “Juicy” Sims, who has been tied to the Vice Lords street gang, a Tribune investigation found.
I do not know how they obtained this information, though I assume it was related to the Cook County Clerk of Court Electronic Full Case Docket Search, though I was unable to find criminal records in there.
Illinois corporation records
The Secretary of State of the State of Illinois maintains corporation records on CyberDrive Illinois: Corporation/ LLC Certificate of Good Standing lookup tool. Once we were able to determine the corporation name from the SBIF grant, it was pretty easy to enter that name into the state database. Unfortunately, there is no way to save searches on the Secretary of State state website. The “Agent name” on this record figures prominently in this story. Here’s a screenshot of the record:
Cook County Inmate Lookup
Now awaiting trial on charges alleging he dealt drugs out of his family home across the alley from the store, Sims has three felony narcotics convictions and a long arrest record.
My assumption is that there is a record of this in Cook County Court records as well. Also helpful is the Cook County Inmate Locator tool. A cursory search of that database does not turn up the person referenced in this story, which may indicate that he is simply not currently held in Cook County Jail.
Chicago Gang Book
A 1990s police chart lists him as a leader of a Vice Lords faction known as the McNeal family, taken from the maiden name of Sims’ mother.
I don’t know where they got this data, but my assumption is that it could be found in the Chicago Crime Commission Gang Book from the time period.
Department of Housing data
Here, the city’s planning efforts have yielded a few scattered victories. Slated to open in October, for example, is a new, 40-unit supportive housing complex for teenage moms.
The City of Chicago Department of Housing publishes an immense amount of information, including the info-rich Affordable Housing Plan Quarterly Reports. Here’s the most recent report:
I couldn’t quite find the 40-unit building referenced above. Perhaps someone more experienced at reading such documents could enlighten in the comments.
Another place where you can see information on development is the FOIA Request Log for Zoning and Land Use Planning. This is a good place to see what other people are interested in with regard to a topic.
Business failure documents
But just as common are dubious successes like the liquor store, or glaring failures — a fast-food restaurant quickly shuttered, a grocery store never built, the Tribune found in an examination of thousands of pages of government records and through months of interviews on the West Side.
I have no idea where they got this info. Business licenses? Dunno. I think that it must be related to this other portion of the article:
That didn’t happen in South Austin. In 2007, for example, city planning officials published a brochure listing all 112 major developments across Chicago.
I’d love to see this document.
Campaign finance data
Six months before Graham lifted the moratorium on new licenses and cleared the way for its opening, the store sent her a political contribution, records show.
This info can be obtained via the Illinois State of Board of Elections Contribution Search. Here’s the search for the Alderman of the ward in the story and the detail page for her election committee.
Crime and business
Along these streets, teenagers sling heroin and cocaine in broad daylight while a virtual army of men and women scour the alleys for metals to sell at the scrap yards that have cropped up around the community.
The city publishes crime reports on a regular basis and the Chicago Tribune has one of the best crime lookup tools that places this data in context. Here’s their page for Austin.
A brick duplex on West Monroe Street that housed at least three generations of the Sims family also was the operating base of the McNeal family faction of the Vice Lords, according to police reports and a Tribune interview with Martise Nunnery, who grew up across the street from Sims and called himself a McNeal family enforcer.
All of this data is available through state incarceration records, but is buttressed by real interviews by real reporters talking to real people with real information
Block parties and public right of way permits
Roomy, elegant homes line the Midway Park corridor, and in a secluded square mile called The Island, neighbors still organize block club events.
Here’s all block party permits as published by the City of Chicago:
Census is king
From 2000 to 2010, the neighborhood of Austin as a whole shed 19,000 of its 117,500 population. Businesses lost their customer base and closed, further stripping the neighborhood of jobs and shrinking its tax base.
Census data is some of the most ubiquitous and useful of all public data. This tool: CENSUS.IRE.ORG, provides a simple way to browse this info. Here’s their table for Chicago:
The numbers quoted in this story match perfectly to the info on the Austin page of the Chicago Health Atlas, I site that I help run at Smart Chicago:
TIF documents
Within months, Sims applied for City Hall funding to renovate the building and open a store that would sell liquor, food, cigarettes and lottery tickets. A TIF program called the Small Business Improvement Fund was dispensing $750,000 in refurbishment money to businesses along South Austin’s Madison Street corridor.
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In his 2009 TIF funding application, Sims described himself as “the founder and visionary leader of Convenience For You,” and said his store would be an oasis in the blighted community.
The TIF in question is called the “Madison/ Austin TIF“. Here’s a list of every single TIF and links to every annual report for every TIF going back to 2004. Here’s the 2009 annual report for the TIF, which references the $750,000 figure on page 37.
I wish I could find the actual application that the Tribune quotes so extensively from. Alas, I could not.
Business licenses
Angry residents filed a lawsuit disputing that permit for EZ Pawn at 6432 W. North Ave. They say the collection of pawnshops exploits the poor and is another visible reminder of the area’s economic decay.
The list of current active business licenses on the City’s data portal can be searched for the word “pawn” and filtered to show only pawnbrokers, although it doesn’t seem to be that easy to find all pawn shops.
Lobbyists
The local lobbying firm helping EZ Pawn is run by Victor Reyes, a former aide to Daley. It has donated $2,100 to Graham’s ward organization to cover the expenses of community meetings on the issue, according to Graham.
The City has lots of lobbyist data, but it does not appear to be updated since 2011. Here’s a great visualization of the relevant data but, again, it was last updated in 2011.
Ordinances
This month, after the Tribune questioned Graham about the liquor store, she introduced an ordinance reinstating the liquor moratorium on the stretch of Madison where Convenience For You is located. Her ordinance described that area as “adversely affected by the over-concentration of businesses licensed to sell alcoholic liquor.”
There are two great resources for this information: the Legistar system, maintained by the City Clerk:
And Chicago Councilmatic, the Open City app by Forest Gregg and Derek Eder:
Neither have a record of the ordinance referenced above.
As you can see, searching for civic data is a laborious, mutli-step, multi-site process. I appreciate the work of news organizations like the Chicago Tribune in pulling all this together.
The more we all know how to find out facts about our surroundings, the more information communities have, the better off we all are as residents of the City of Chicago.