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“If there’s anything left on the table we weren’t able to solve, I don’t know what it is,” Reilly said Thursday afternoon, just before the City Council’s zoning committee approved the hospital’s plan with Reilly’s support.
Reilly said this with a tone of both relief and weariness. After months of deliberation, negotiations between the hospital and members of the Streeterville Organization of Active Residents (SOAR) finally ended with a deal Wednesday afternoon. Along the way, supporters of the hospital–most notably Mayor Daley–accused SOAR and Reilly of insensitivity to the needs of sick children for daring to express concerns about traffic congestion and the proposed rooftop helicopter plan.
Reilly vowed that he’ll be monitoring the plan at each step. And he admitted that the whole process seems a little ass-backward. “Logic would dictate that the state would do a safety review and say, ‘Yes, it’s safe,’ before we can move forward [with the zoning approval],” he said.
