Morgan Stanley purchasing rights to operate Chicago parking meters!
From Crain's Chicago Business. (I guess NOTHING is off the table in the Windy City.):
The rush is on at City Hall, and any motorist who uses a parking meter will end up picking up the tab--in a big way.
That's the bottom line of a huge deal announced by Mayor Richard M. Daley on Tuesday morning, one that provides badly needed cash to shore up the strapped city treasury but also hits parking meter users everywhere in the city with up to eightfold fee hikes by 2013.
And Mr. Daley, citing the delicate financial markets, wants it all approved and enacted by Thursday, just three days after bids for the deal were received.
First, the hard news:
Under the proposed pact, a partnership headed by a division of Morgan Stanley, the big New York investment bank, will pay Chicago $1.16 billion up front for the right to run Chicago's 36,000 meters and collect payments for 75 years. Some smaller investment partners also have a piece of the deal, but according to the city they, too, are investment units of Morgan Stanley.
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/article.pl?page_id=23...
