How Amazon could change the country’s grocery game

 Bok Choy and Shanghai Bok Choy

The Washington Post reports:

On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon plans to open its first grocery store in Los Angeles, possibly by year’s end. The Journal reported that Amazon had signed leases for at least two other grocery locations that could open early next year. Sources told The Journal that the company was looking into locations in San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

Amazon is also reportedly looking to buy regional grocery chains.

The Journal reported that the new Amazon grocery stores wouldn’t compete directly with Whole Foods stores, and that they would sell a wider selection of products.

(click here to continue reading How Amazon could change the country’s grocery game – The Washington Post.)

Whole Foods, even though owned by Amazon, still doesn’t sell a lot of products that Amazon would sell in a differently oriented mass-oriented grocery chain. Products like Coca-Cola, Kraft American Cheese, personal grooming products that contain all sorts of chemicals, and so on. Amazon.com sells these items, so they have data regarding how popular cases of Cheetos would be. 

I was amazed (and pleased) that these kinds of items did not suddenly appear at Whole Foods once Amazon bought them, actually. 

Acxiom supports Tim Cook’s call for strict U.S. data laws

Apple Store in Soho

So Tim Cook called for better privacy regulation in the US. Maybe he reads this humble blog.1

Tim Cook:

In 2019, it’s time to stand up for the right to privacy—yours, mine, all of ours. Consumers shouldn’t have to tolerate another year of companies irresponsibly amassing huge user profiles, data breaches that seem out of control and the vanishing ability to control our own digital lives.
This problem is solvable—it isn’t too big, too challenging or too late. Innovation, breakthrough ideas and great features can go hand in hand with user privacy—and they must. Realizing technology’s potential depends on it.

That’s why I and others are calling on the U.S. Congress to pass comprehensive federal privacy legislation—a landmark package of reforms that protect and empower the consumer. Last year, before a global body of privacy regulators, I laid out four principles that I believe should guide legislation:

(click here to continue reading Apple CEO Tim Cook: It’s Time for Action on Data Privacy | Time.com.)

 Eye see u Willis

Fast Company adds:

Acxiom, like Mr. Cook, also supports a national privacy law for the U.S., such as GDPR provides for the European Union. Acxiom is actively participating in discussions with U.S. lawmakers as well as industry trade groups to help ensure U.S. consumers receive the kind of transparency, access, and control Acxiom has been providing voluntarily for years,” the company said. “We believe it would be universally beneficial if we were able to work with Apple and other industry leaders to define the best set of laws that maintain the benefits of data in our economy while giving the necessary protections and rights to all people.”

In its statement, Acxiom said it is working with lawmakers to build a “singular, united set of policies across the U.S.” What it does not want, according to the statement, are “multiple and independent state laws” making it onerous to comply.

Of course, it behooves Acxiom to seem amenable to such legislative moves. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the tide is shifting in the U.S., and more people want better safeguards over their data. Cook called for not just stricter data regulations, but a federally controlled data broker database that would make it possible for citizens to know exactly what information the companies have on them and which companies transacted with these data firms. While Acxiom is saying it’s open to new regulation, it’s unclear what exactly the firm will agree to.

(click here to continue reading Acxiom supports Tim Cook’s call for strict U.S. data laws.)

America does need to reign in the multitude of personal data brokers, and the GDPR is a decent model to work off of. 

Footnotes:
  1. kidding, of course []

As Big Retailers Seek to Cut Their Tax Bills, Towns Bear the Brunt

There Is More Than One Way To Stop 

The New York Times:

WAUWATOSA, Wis. — With astonishing range and rapidity, big-box retailers and corporate giants are using an aggressive legal tactic to shrink their property tax bills, a strategy that is costing local governments and school districts around the country hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue.

These businesses — many of them brick-and-mortar stores like Walmart, Home Depot, Target, Kohl’s, Menards and Walgreens that have faced fierce online competition — maintain that no matter how valuable a thriving store is to its current owner, these warehouse-type structures are not worth much to anyone else.

(click here to continue reading As Big Retailers Seek to Cut Their Tax Bills, Towns Bear the Brunt – The New York Times.)

Corporate welfare, alive and well, decimating American communities one by one…

Michael Ferro Is A Horrid Human Being, Part the 454,239th

The Perfect Way to Unwind

I always thought that Sam Zell was the worst owner the Chicago Tribune ever had, but Michael Ferro seems much worse.

NPR reports:

Several months after taking control of the troubled Tribune Publishing Co. in 2016, Chicago investor Michael Ferro convened a session of corporate leaders from within his own news empire, including chief news executives from such storied papers as the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and The Baltimore Sun.

The group of about 20 people trooped from Chicago’s iconic Tribune Tower on Michigan Avenue to an upscale restaurant nearby. In a private room, participants dined on seafood and steak while Ferro, then the company’s chairman, held forth on his plans.

His own net worth was newly in the nine figures. Associates and peers say Ferro held ambitions that were wide-ranging, even audacious, given the newspaper industry’s stiff headwinds.

At the dinner, as at other moments, Ferro railed against those who he felt were impeding him — including perceived rivals and competitors. Among them: the Southern California billionaire and civic leader Eli Broad, whom Ferro called part of a “Jewish cabal” that ran Los Angeles.

(click here to continue reading Tribune, Tronc And Beyond: A Slur, A Secret Payout, And A Looming Sale : NPR.)

You Gave Without Taking

Yeah, and this:

Early this year, however, Tribune Publishing made the first in a series of secret payments to total more than $2.5 million to avert a threatened lawsuit filed by a fired newspaper executive, according to three people with knowledge of the deal. That had the effect of keeping Ferro’s anti-Semitic slur out of the public spotlight.

The company agreed to secretly pay Maharaj more than $2.5 million, in installments, according to three people with knowledge of the pact. That financial obligation was not disclosed in corporate filings to shareholders and analysts. The payments started in the first quarter of this year, for which Tribune Publishing reported a net loss of $14.8 million. The loss was attributed to the company’s decision in December 2017 to pay Ferro $15 million in consulting fees even as he served as chairman and was the company’s controlling owner.

Even as the company cut back jobs in traditional newsrooms, Levinsohn and other executives acted to create a separate staff apart from the LA Times and its other newspaper properties. He planned to draw upon outside writers, some uncompensated or who would even pay for the privilege of being associated with the newspapers’ brands. Plans included a consolidated entertainment website called LA.com and the outsourcing of Washington coverage to the digital news service Axios. Neither of those initiatives came to fruition. (LA.com still says “coming soon.”) But the digital strategy, gravitas with scale, sparked distrust among journalists.

The kicker is Michael Ferro still owns 25% of the Tribune, or what’s left of it as Ferro’s hand picked lackies furiously fire writers and jack up executive compensation to pull whatever profits they can off while the Tribune still exists.

Why Amazon’s HQ2 Search Backfired

 More Spare Change

WIRED posits:

The search was largely a success for CEO Jeff Bezos, who can use valuable data from the losing cities to inform Amazon’s business and future expansion. But in at least one respect, Amazon’s Hunger Games-style civic competition backfired: It’s shined a spotlight on how Amazon and companies like it have benefitted enormously from taxpayer funds.

Each year, local politicians spend up to an estimated $90 billion to lure corporations like Amazon to their states, which The Atlantic points out is “more than the federal government spends on housing, education, or infrastructure.” Most companies broker these deals in private.

In the end, Amazon says it will collectively receive $2.2 billion from the three cities where it plans to open offices. In an unusual move, the company disclosed that figure in its own press release. Information about incentives typically comes from government, not the corporations awarded the funds. Others have noted that Amazon might also benefit from existing tax credits, like a New York City program worth up to an additional $900 million, which were not part of the deal.

Over the course of Amazon’s year-long pursuit of new offices, researchers and journalists intensified their examination of not just the money Amazon might receive, but also what it has collected already. The company regularly receives public incentives to open facilities like warehouses and data centers, which Good Jobs First estimates have totaled $1.6 billion. An investigation from the nonprofit New Food Economy found that some Amazon warehouse workers are paid so little that they often qualify for another type of public benefit: food stamps. In some cases, taxpayers may even be subsidizing Amazon’s electricity costs, according to a Bloomberg report from August.

(click here to continue reading Why Amazon’s HQ2 Search Backfired | WIRED.)

Corporate welfare is certainly a drag on the US economy, but I’m not so sanguine as to think it will end anytime soon. Sad. I would guess that the $90 billion number cited above is a bit low.

Not to mention that $3,100,000,000 is a lot of money for a government to shower on to a rich, successful corporation like Amazon. Money that won’t be spent to improve roads, infrastructure, help with college debt, pay salary of teachers, police, EMT, etc. A lot of taxpayer money thrown at Jeff Bezos so he can have a helipad…

I’m so glad Amazon didn’t choose my city. 

Google Exposed User Data, Feared Repercussions of Disclosing to Public

Expanding the Parameters
Expanding the Parameters

WSJ:

Google exposed the private data of hundreds of thousands of users of the Google+ social network and then opted not to disclose the issue this past spring, in part because of fears that doing so would draw regulatory scrutiny and cause reputational damage.

A software glitch in the social site gave outside developers potential access to private Google+ profile data between 2015 and March 2018, when internal investigators discovered and fixed the issue, according to the documents and people briefed on the incident. A memo reviewed by the Journal prepared by Google’s legal and policy staff and shared with senior executives warned that disclosing the incident would likely trigger “immediate regulatory interest” and invite comparisons to Facebook’s leak of user information to data firm Cambridge Analytica.

(click here to continue reading Google Exposed User Data, Feared Repercussions of Disclosing to Public – WSJ.)

The cover-up is always worse. Google could have admitted to this during some Trump-Tweet-Tempest, and nobody would have paid much attention. 

Emanuel, aldermen block attempt to cut hours of troubled North Side scrap shredder

Cans HDPE Pet

Chicago Tribune:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration and a group of aldermen vigorously defended a clout-heavy scrap yard on Tuesday, brushing aside neighbors who shared stories about noxious pollution and loud noises from one of the last industrial operations in a fast-gentrifying corridor along the North Branch of the Chicago River.

One of the neighborhood’s elected representatives, Ald. Brian Hopkins, 2nd, introduced a measure months ago to revoke a special waiver that allows General Iron Industries to collect flattened cars, used appliances and other scrap metal around the clock and operate massive shredders from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.

City rules normally restrict scrap yards to operate from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.

(click here to continue reading Emanuel, aldermen block attempt to cut hours of troubled North Side scrap shredder – Chicago Tribune.)

If I lived near here, I’d be really pissed too. 5 in the morning is way too early to be making such a racket. 

The place sounds like a menace anyway. 

After Hopkins forced colleagues to call his measure for a vote, Tuesday’s long-delayed hearing quickly devolved into heated personal attacks from a former federal prosecutor hired by the company’s owners, and repeated interruptions of neighborhood residents by Ald. George Cardenas, 12th, chairman of the city’s Health and Environmental Protection committee.

Hopkins, Ald, Michele Smith, 43rd, and community groups in Lincoln Park and Bucktown contend the scrap shredder is a menace to the public, citing clouds of metallic pollution that routinely waft into nearby residential areas and three crackdowns on General Iron by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the latest of which came in July.

Georgia Nicholson, who lives across the street from General Iron, says she hoses metallic particles off her patio several times every day. “I don’t know why the city doesn’t see these things,” she said.

“My job is to represent the people of my neighborhood who have been telling me since before I got elected about the explosions, about the noise, about the dust, about the oily film that they find on their cars, on their sidewalks, on their wading pools,” said Hopkins, who along with Smith and Ald. Scott Wauguespack, 32nd, is calling for the city to turn the site into a new park. “There is absolutely no question that General Iron is a nuisance and is a health hazard to the neighborhood.”

Metal Only - Slayer

Lawsuit Over billboard killed a Fulton Market hotel project on Randolph Street

Arizona heat sounds good about now
Clear Channel billboard at 600 W Randolph St

John O’Brien of Chicago real estate website, The Real Deal reported back in April:

AIC Hotel Group is suing MCZ Development, saying the developer didn’t disclose an air-rights deal for a billboard when the two made a Fulton Market land transaction.

The failure cost the chain an opportunity to build a hotel, according to the suit.

AIC in December bought a parking lot at 600 West Randolph Street from MCZ for $7 million, with plans to build a hotel on the land, the lawsuit contends. But after the deal closed, AIC learned that Clear Channel had an air rights deal that guaranteed a billboard on the building next door would not be obstructed, the suit said.

The billboard deal runs through 2042. The suit claims MCZ didn’t tell AIC about the billboard agreement before the Randolph Street land deal closed, nor was the air rights agreement ever recorded with Cook County.

(click here to continue reading AIC Hotel Group | Randolph Street Hotel | Lawsuit.)

wow. As an interested observer of this parking lot, I was curious as to why nothing had been built here in the hot Fulton Market area, year after year. Perhaps this is this reason? Presumedly, Clear Channel could sell the rights to AIC Hotel Group for some fee, but perhaps they want more than AIC Hotel Group is willing to spend. 24 years, 12 months a year, how much revenue could one billboard generate? If Clear Channel got $5,000 a month1, that would be $1,440,000. If AIC offered Clear Channel $800,000 cash, would they accept it? I bet this is a solveable issue.

Kick Off Your Shoes…

As a parenthetical thought, I miss the website, EveryBlock, as I would have heard of this story before today…

Footnotes:
  1. a number I’m totally guessing at, btw []

Drug executive Nirmal Mulye: It’s a ‘moral requirement’ to charge patients the highest price

Social Media Drug Mart

LA Times reports:

In the category of saying the quiet parts out loud, consider this statement by Nirmal Mulye, the chief executive of drug company Nostrum Laboratories:

“I think it is a moral requirement to make money when you can … to sell the product for the highest price.”

Mulye was responding to questions posed by the Financial Times about his quadrupling the price of an essential antibiotic to $2,392 per bottle. The drug, nitrofurantoin, is used to treat urinary tract infections. It has been on the market since 1953 and is listed by the World Health Organization as an essential medicine for “basic healthcare systems.”

In his interview with the Financial Times published Tuesday, Mulye defended Martin Shkreli, the former drug company CEO who became the face of the industry’s profiteering in 2015 when he jacked up the price of a generic anti-parasitic drug needed by HIV patients by more than 5,000%.

(click here to continue reading Drug executive: It’s a ‘moral requirement’ to charge patients the highest price.)

Strange definition of morals. This douchenozzle might want to check a dictionary.

Merriam-Webster’s definition of moral:

a : of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior : ethical moral judgments

b : expressing or teaching a conception of right behavior a moral poem

c : conforming to a standard of right behavior took a moral position on the issue though it cost him the nomination

d : sanctioned by or operative on one’s conscience or ethical judgment a moral obligation

e : capable of right and wrong action a moral agent

 

(click here to continue reading Moral | Definition of Moral by Merriam-Webster.)

So which definition of moral were you referring to, Mr. Mulye? I think the moral response would be for the federal government to start regulating the price of drugs such as this one. 

The 23rd Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Scott Gottlieb, responded

Wirtz-linked Breakthru Beverage invests $9.2 million in Canadian marijuana producer

Truck full of Cannabis

 Chicago Tribune:

Breakthru Beverage Group, the alcohol wholesale business co-led by Blackhawks Chairman Rocky Wirtz, announced plans Monday to invest $9.2 million in CannTrust, a Canadian marijuana producer.

Breakthru has signed a letter of intent to become the exclusive distributor for CannTrust as recreational marijuana is set to become legal in Canada on Oct. 17. In doing so, Breakthru joins a growing number of major alcohol companies to recently invest in the global potential of the burgeoning marijuana industry. Giant beer companies such as Molson Coors — parent company of Chicago-based MillerCoors — and Constellation Brands, which bases its beer business in Chicago, are planning to develop and sell cannabis-infused drinks in Canada.

(click here to continue reading Wirtz-linked Breakthru Beverage invests $9.2 million in Canadian marijuana producer – Chicago Tribune.)

The great Green Rush of 2018 continues, unabated. 

Secret Smile 

From the CannTrust press release:

The cannabis sales brokerage operation will reside in a newly-formed subsidiary of Breakthru Beverage Group and will be entirely separate from its beverage alcohol brokerage, Breakthru Beverage Canada. It will however leverage the company’s North American business insights, strategies, technology and analytic tools to be a differentiator in the marketplace.

“CannTrust has made significant investments in both capacity and innovation with the next generation of products such as edibles and cannabis-infused beverages expected to launch in 2019. We have a nano-technology that enables us to produce cannabis infused beverages neutral in taste, and clear as water. This technology will position us to be a leader in Canada, and in future markets globally.” Rogers added.

An affiliate of Breakthru Beverage Group will be purchasing 902,405 common shares of CannTrust at a purchase price of $10.23 per share for gross proceeds of $9,231,600. In addition, the affiliate of Breakthru Beverage Group will have options to purchase from CannTrust up to an additional 2,000,000 common shares in the aggregate at a price per share equal to a 15% discount of the 5-day volume-weighted average price on the TSX immediately prior to the date the applicable option is exercised, if CannTrust exceeds certain sale thresholds.

(click here to continue reading CannTrust and Breakthru Beverage Enter Exclusive Partnership in Recreational Cannabis Market in Canada | CannTrust.)

 Mustache Rider

CannTrust About Us page:

CannTrust is a federally regulated licensed producer, who brings more than 40 years of pharmacy and healthcare experience to the Medical Cannabis industry. We apply this expertise to produce 100% pesticide free standardized Medical Cannabis for patients in need.

At CannTrust™ we are committed to research and innovation, as well as contributing to the growing body of evidence-based research regarding the use and efficacy of cannabis. Our product development teams along with our exclusive pharma partner Apotex are diligently innovating and developing products. CannTrust has been granted a Section 9 License by Health Canada under the Narcotic Control Regulations. This allows us to expand our product development and research to include pharmaceuticals in an effort to make it easier for patients to use Medical Cannabis today and in the future.

Our onsite laboratory with advanced technology and equipment for testing and research on the medical use of cannabis provides CannTrust with the ability to develop and rigorously test our products at any point.

We continue to evolve our patient and medical practitioner education program about Medical Cannabis, and have an industry leading compassionate use program to support patients with financial needs. We continue to expand to ensure we have a continuous supply of quality standardized products and superior customer service.

Our original 50,000-square foot state-of-the-art hydroponic facility is home to cultivating, processing extracts and our distribution center.

Our second facility is a 430,000-square foot greenhouse in the heart of the Niagara region. The facility is the first of its kind in the Canadian Cannabis industry to be designed and engineered using advanced perpetual growing technology. This facility is one of the largest in North America, with Phase 1 completed and Phase 2 to come on-stream in mid 2018.

 

 

(click here to continue reading About Us | CannTrust Medical Cannabis Producer Toronto.)

Trump says Canada not needed in NAFTA deal, warns Congress not to interfere

The Road to Socialism In Canada

Reuters reports:

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday there was no need to keep Canada in the North American Free Trade Agreement and warned Congress not to meddle with the trade negotiations or he would terminate the trilateral trade pact altogether.

Lawmakers on Friday warned that a deal with Mexico could struggle to win approval from Congress unless Canada was also included. Support from Democrats would be needed to pass a purely bilateral deal, they said.

(click here to continue reading Trump says Canada not needed in NAFTA deal, warns Congress not to interfere | Reuters.)

I realize it is a fool’s errand to attempt to decipher the Orange Dotard’s reasoning about any particular topic, but I don’t understand why he’s so antagonistic towards Canada. Is it that Canada is too multi-cultural for Stephen Wormtongue Miller’s taste? Or was Trudeau too nice to Trump in person, so Trump thinks Trudeau, and Canada by extension, is a little sweet?1

Perhaps the only answer is to ask what is Putin’s motive for destroying cordial relations between Canada and the US.

The AP reports:

 

A senior Justice Department lawyer says a former British spy told him at a breakfast meeting two years ago that Russian intelligence believed it had Donald Trump “over a barrel,” according to multiple people familiar with the encounter.

 

The lawyer, Bruce Ohr, also says he learned that a Trump campaign aide had met with higher-level Russian officials than the aide had acknowledged, the people said.

 

The previously unreported details of the July 30, 2016, breakfast with Christopher Steele, which Ohr described to lawmakers this week in a private interview, reveal an exchange of potentially explosive information about Trump between two men the president has relentlessly sought to discredit.

 

They add to the public understanding of those pivotal summer months as the FBI and intelligence community scrambled to untangle possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. And they reflect the concern of Steele, a longtime FBI informant whose Democratic-funded research into Trump ties to Russia was compiled into a dossier, that the Republican presidential candidate was possibly compromised and his urgent efforts to convey that anxiety to contacts at the FBI and Justice Department.

Among the things Ohr said he learned from Steele during the breakfast was that an unnamed former Russian intelligence official had communicated that Russian intelligence believed “they had Trump over a barrel,” according to people familiar with the meeting.

 

 

(click here to continue reading AP sources: Lawyer was told Russia had ‘Trump over a barrel’.)

Headed To Ward's Island

There was also this bit of news about the negotiation from The Toronto Star:

 High-stakes trade negotiations between Canada and the U.S. were dramatically upended on Friday morning after inflammatory secret remarks by President Donald Trump were obtained by the Toronto Star.

 Trump’s comments were viewed by Canadian negotiators as evidence for their suspicions that the U.S. was not making a legitimate effort to compromise. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s officials confronted the president’s officials with the leaked quotes at a high-level meeting on Friday morning.

Trump made his controversial statements in an Oval Office interview with Bloomberg News on Thursday. He said, “off the record,” that he is not making any compromises at all with Canada — and that he could not say this publicly because “it’s going to be so insulting they’re not going to be able to make a deal.”

“Here’s the problem. If I say no — the answer’s no. If I say no, then you’re going to put that and it’s going to be so insulting they’re not going to be able to make a deal … I can’t kill these people,” Trump said of the Canadian government.

In another remark he did not want published, Trump said that any deal with Canada would be “totally on our terms.” He suggested he was scaring the Canadians into submission by repeatedly threatening to impose tariffs on imports of Canadian-made cars.

“Off the record, Canada’s working their ass off. And every time we have a problem with a point, I just put up a picture of a Chevrolet Impala,” Trump said. The Impala is produced at the General Motors plant in Oshawa, Ont.

Bloomberg agreed to Trump’s request to keep the comments off the record. But the Star, which obtained the quotes from a source, is not bound by any promises Bloomberg made to the president, and it published the quotes after they became part of the critical negotiations.

Trump, of course, is known for both dishonesty and for bragging about his own greatness, and he regularly utters dubious boasts about how he is supposedly dominating the feeble people on the other side of the bargaining table. When he claimed to have made no compromises, it is possible he was making a false claim to impress the Bloomberg journalists.

There was no apparent evidence on Friday for his claim that he has wielded a photo of an Impala as a negotiating tactic.

(click here to continue reading Donald Trump confirms Star story on his secret bombshell remarks about Canada | The Star.)

Footnotes:
  1. Manigault Newman suggests that the president’s views of his own staff are often less than flattering. When Ivanka Trump first started dating Jared Kushner, she asked her father what he thought of Kushner. She writes: “’He seems a little sweet to me,’ he said, using his phrasing for ‘gay.’” []

Google and Mastercard Cut a Secret Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

Google 500 error 

Bloomberg reports:

For the past year, select Google advertisers have had access to a potent new tool to track whether the ads they ran online led to a sale at a physical store in the U.S. That insight came thanks in part to a stockpile of Mastercard transactions that Google paid for.

But most of the two billion Mastercard holders aren’t aware of this behind-the-scenes tracking. That’s because the companies never told the public about the arrangement.

Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Mastercard Inc. brokered a business partnership during about four years of negotiations, according to four people with knowledge of the deal, three of whom worked on it directly. The alliance gave Google an unprecedented asset for measuring retail spending, part of the search giant’s strategy to fortify its primary business against onslaughts from Amazon.com Inc. and others.

(click here to continue reading Google and Mastercard Cut a Secret Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales – Bloomberg.)

Google has more efficient PR teams than Facebook, even though the two companies seem equally as cavalier about vacuuming up personal information without informed consent of consumers.

Google Express
Google Express

Macy’s looks to sell Medinah Temple, relocate Bloomingdale’s store

Commercial Temple
Commercial Temple

Chicago Tribune reports:

Macy’s is putting the historic Medinah Temple building in River North up for sale as the retailer continues cashing in on its valuable real estate portfolio.

Cincinnati-based Macy’s will market the landmark building at 600 N. Wabash Ave. to potential buyers, with plans to move the Bloomingdale’s home furnishings store out of the space, Macy’s spokeswoman Andrea Schwartz said.

The home store eventually will move to space within the existing Bloomingdale’s department store in the nearby 900 North Michigan Shops mall, Schwartz said. She declined to estimate when the store will move or how much the company expects to make in the property sale.

A buyer could redevelop the approximately 130,000-square-foot building into another use, such as offices or other types of retail.

The building is valuable because of its proximity to North Michigan Avenue, as well as its unusual architecture.

Plans to sell the building come 17 years after the former

(click here to continue reading Macy’s looks to sell Medinah Temple, move Bloomingdale’s store – Chicago Tribune.)

Medinah Remnant
Medinah Remnant

Chicago minaret  Polapan Blue
Chicago minaret – Polapan Blue

Urban droplet
Urban droplet

In China, Salmon is Salmon, Even if It’s Trout

Fish Monger - Metra Market

The New York Times reports:

At issue for many is where the two fish swim. Most Asian salmon spend the bulk of their lives in saltwater. Rainbow trout are often cultivated in water tanks or ponds, which could expose them to freshwater parasites that could infect humans if the fish is eaten raw. The United States Food and Drug Administration warns of potential parasite hazards from eating freshwater fish. In Hong Kong, a Chinese city that operates under its own laws, serving freshwater fish raw is illegal.

“It’s not only the issue of rainbow trout being substituted for salmon, but whether freshwater fish should be used for sashimi at all,” Dr. Kevin Kwok, an assistant professor in the department of applied biology and chemical technology at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, said.

Fish is often mislabeled around the world in order to fetch higher prices, such as labeling yellowtail as mahi mahi or sea bass as halibut. Regulators in the United States label these substitutions as economic deception.

That goes for salmon, too. Officials in the United States forbid fish sellers from labeling steelhead trout — essentially, rainbow trout that swim in saltwater — as salmon. Generally, salmon spawn in freshwater but return to the sea.

(click here to continue reading In China, Salmon is Salmon, Even if It’s Trout – The New York Times.)

I wouldn’t be surprised if this and similar substitution happens frequently in the US as well. Budgets of regulatory agencies have been sliced over the last decade, so who really monitors what kind of fish gets delivered to restaurants?

Salmon House Caretakers Residence

Sterling Bay buying ADM wheat mill in Fulton Market, eyes adding Metra station

Storing Wheat  Agfa Scala 200
Storing Wheat – Agfa Scala 200

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Sterling Bay has a $25 million deal to buy an Archer Daniels Midland wheat mill in the Fulton Market district, and hopes to replace it with a project that would include the neighborhood’s first Metra station.

The busy Chicago developer has a contract to buy the 2.2-acre property at 1300 W. Carroll Ave., pending due diligence, ADM spokeswoman Jackie Anderson said in an email. She did not confirm the sale price, which sources said is about $25 million.

…Sterling Bay executives declined to comment on the deal with ADM, or on specific plans for the site, but people familiar with the firm’s plans say it wants to put a Metra station there. Erin Lavin Cabonargi, Sterling Bay’s director of development services, said the firm supports long-running efforts to create a Metra station, “further strengthening the expansion of the central business district and the job creation the neighborhood is promoting.”

It’s unclear whether the train station would be built into the base of a new structure, as seen in downtown skyscrapers, or if it would be a standalone platform. The estimated cost is unknown.

(click here to continue reading Sterling Bay buying ADM wheat mill in Fulton Market, eyes adding Metra station – Chicago Tribune.)

More public transit options are always more better, and traffic in this area is increasingly gridlocked even before all these new corporate HQs and new apartment/condo buildings come on line, so traffic is only going to get worse.

As an aside, Sterling Bay came of nowhere to become one of the biggest developers in the West Loop, and seemingly are targeting the entire city.  

Majestic Corn Silo Kodak Ultra Color 100UC
Majestic Corn Silo- Kodak Ultra Color 100UC

Ogden Avenue  1923
Ogden Avenue – 1923

I Doubt That Is True
I Doubt That Is True

Industrial Devolution
Industrial Devolution

ADM butt crack
ADM butt-crack