The fate of Logan Square’s Mega Mall shopping center won’t be on the ballot when voters in the 35th Ward select an alderman in the February 27 municipal elections. But it remains an important factor in the increasingly heated race between alderman Rey Colon, former alderman Vilma Colom, and challenger Miguel Sotomayor.
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Colon laughs at the accusation. “I think it’s particularly funny coming from her,” he says. “She upzoned all over the ward–that’s partly why she lost the last election.” He argues that, in contrast, he’s pursued a course of “balanced development,” downzoning in some cases and upzoning in others.
The Mega Mall battle is part of a larger struggle over the Milwaukee-Fullerton tax increment financing district. As most readers know by now, a TIF is a district the City Council creates to divert property taxes from the schools, parks, and other taxing bodies into a slush fund controlled by the mayor and the local alderman. Originally created with Colom’s support in 2000, the Milwaukee-Fullerton TIF–which had accumulated about $9.2 million by 2005, the last year for which figures are available–was intended to spruce up the community by helping businesses along Milwaukee between Armitage and Fullerton.
Colon’s proposal threw some of his old supporters off guard. He’d already dismayed many of them when he discounted the objections of citizens’ advisory members to an upzoning one of his largest campaign contributors, developer Mark Fishman, would need to build about 100 upscale condos on Milwaukee near Central Park, roughly a half mile northwest of the mall.
Colom says it’s unfair to seize Park’s property now that he’s spent a couple million to get it up to code. “The owner fixed up the Mega Mall, and [Colon] is still going after him,” she says. “To me, if someone meets the requirement, he should let them stay. This is not a communist country.”
