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Cubs owner Tom Ricketts agrees to buy new Chicago-based soccer team Cubs owner Tom Ricketts has agreed to become the majority owner of an expansion United Soccer League team based in Chicago, real estate developer and co-owner Sterling Bay announced Wednesday. The team hopes to play in a planned 20,000-seat stadium to be built at a site near the Chicago River in Lincoln Yards. Sterling Bay purchased an expansion team from the USL for a reported $5 million last November with plans to build a state-of-the-art facility as part of a 70-acre mixed-use development project. Ricketts, who signed a letter of intent to purchase the majority of the team, would own two-thirds of the franchise once the deal goes through, according to Crain’s Chicago Business. https://chicago.suntimes.com/sports/...yards-stadium/ |
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^ You never know, might be a ploy to get the Fire to move to the city again. They are locked into a contract with Bridgeview for several more years, but clearly they need to come back to the city. Its impossible getting out to that stadium, which explains why they are having so much difficulty filling seats. Staying out there is killing their visibility.
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Is there a shred of evidence that being in the city boosts attendance?
How has being in the city impacted Depaul Blue Demons' game attendance? |
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I went to a Blue Demons game and the concourses were really congested. The lines for concessions created these impassable barriers.
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Did anybody else read this:
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/artic...wntown-chicago Joe Cahill bores me with how overly alarmist he can be. It's almost like he wrote that while on the toilet this morning, freaked out by a few recent headlines. |
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The Lincoln Yards stadium proposal has the potential to be like a mini-Wrigleyville with the added benefit of being on the Chicago River. Toyota Park sits inside a sea of parking lots with zero walkability to anything. |
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Congressional researchers have estimated that the zebra mussel has cost businesses and communities over $5 billion since their initial invasion. Zebra mussels have cost power companies alone over $3 billion...Zebra mussels also affect all classes of algae species, resulting in a shortage of food sources to native species of freshwater mussels and fish in the Great Lakes The lack of salmon food fish bait can barely support that industry anymore. But yea the color of the lakes are looking really pristine. Those invasive filter feeders [ from Black Sea and Caspian Sea in Eurasia in ships ballast waters ] without natural predators are extremely efficient. They made our lake look like that in about a decade. It is believed they were inadvertently introduced into the lakes in the ballast water of ocean-going ships traversing the St. Lawrence Seaway. They are so thick their dead shells are forming new beaches on Lake Michigan. The vast majority of the organisms that are natural enemies in Europe are not present in North America. Ecologically similar species do exist, but these species are unlikely to be able to eliminate those mussels already established and will have a limited role in their control. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_mussel Although perhaps its not the worst thing in the world that has happened to the Great Lakes. At the least we got that postcard color now pretty much forever. |
I've read that the zebra mussel and quagga mussel population can filter the entire volume of Lake Michigan in a week or less. An impossible situation to fight.
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At this point I wonder if its wise to introduce some of the Zebra mussel's natural predators into the lake ecosystem? We haven't really had much luck in the past with introducing foreign species into the Great Lakes system, but short of the complete ecological collapse that we are essentially seeing and facing, what other options are there?
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But there are many examples of introducing exotic predators to deal with another invasive species. We introduced the Asian Lady bug that can bite a person and is not as effective as a natural Lady Bug that is harmless to humans. I would easily say there are more examples of introducing invasive predators to eliminate invasive species than there are successes. |
Speaking of introduced exotics, the dreaded Asian silver carp that's threatening the Great Lakes was introduced to control algae in aquaculture and wastewater treatment and is feared to compound the invasive effect of zebra and quagga mussels due to the excessive algae the mussels grow from their excreta.
But apparently the meat of silver carp is tasty. If and when, and it's really a matter of when it reaches the lake, we better learn to eat it. |
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The Zebra Mussel, by eating plankton actually wiped out the nasty Alewife problem by depriving them of their food source which was actually the same plankton the Mussels eat. The Alewives used to boom in population so erratically due seasonal algae blooms that they would suffer starvation collapse and die en masse and make beaches uninhabitable. The Lake Trout population, which would be the typical apex predator in the lakes, was also suffering population collapse at the time due to lampreys, so there was nothing to control them. So we stocked the lakes with Salmon which would predate the Alewives and control them. Then Zebra mussels came along and ate all the plankton collapsing the Alewife population and therefore the Salmon population. They also happen to be excellent food for Lake Trout which is the original species that is supposed to dominate the Great Lakes apex niche. This shifting of prey species in combination with clever conservation techniques to kill lamprey eels has helped to bring the Lake Trout population back to multidecade highs. Quote:
The collapse of the Lake Trout population in the 1940's and 50's devastated what was one of the largest fisheries in the US. At one point in time they were catching millions of pounds of Lake Trout a year which is excellent tasting and normally thrives in the lakes. Now that lampreys are eating 90 million less pounds of fish, the commercial industry is thriving again. A lot of native species feast on the Zebra mussel including Smallmouth Bass, Lake Trout, and Crayfish, which apparently eat 105 Zebra Mussels a day per adult Crayfish. Crayfish also basically inhabit the same prey status as Zebra Mussels for Lake Trout which further boosts the Trout's numbers. So ironically Lake Michigan is healthier now with Zebra Mussels than it was before their invasion. They are a pain for power plants and boaters, but they caused huge issues for other more noxious invaders while feeding some of the rebounding native species. But we are way off topic so N E ways back to buildings. |
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I have memories of the alewives rotting on the beaches, that was not pleasant at all. |
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Bravo, sir! :cheers: Aaron (Glowrock) |
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