Public-Private Partnerships: How Big Chicago Projects Actually Get Built
Nothing large gets built in an American city by a single actor anymore. The transit extension, the redeveloped riverfront, the converted office landmark, the new cultural campus — behind each stands a negotiated structure of public commitments and private capital, tax tools and philanthropic money, community agreements and political capital. Hirsh Mohindra, who studies how Chicago’s major projects move from rendering to reality, observes that public discussion of these deals tends to fixate on the announcement and the ribbon-cutting, while everything that determines success or failure happens in the less glamorous middle: the structuring of the partnership itself. A public-private partnership, at its core, is an exchange. The public side contributes things only it can supply: land, infrastructure, zoning, financing tools such as tax increment financing, and the regulatory certainty that long projects require. The private side contributes capital, development expertise, construction cap...