Bernard Schoenburg
The State Journal-Register
The people who run a city and those who build things in it don’t always publicly air their disagreements, but a $5,000 contribution in a race for alderman has generated just such a conversation.
EMS Midwest LLC, owned and operated by lobbyist and developer CHRIS STONE of Springfield, gave $5,000 to Ward 7 candidate SARAH DELANO PAVLIK on Dec. 30. She is taking on incumbent Ald. JOE McMENAMIN and MICHAEL HIGGINS in the April 7 election.
I made calls about recent finance reports, and McMenamin said he thinks the $5,000 donation from Stone to Pavlik “was a red flag,” given that Stone had been working to develop the site of the vacant Esquire Theatre on MacArthur Boulevard, which is in the ward.
McMenamin said he doesn’t take contributions from developers or unions to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest.
Stone said he does have a personal relationship with Pavlik and her husband, TOM, who are both lawyers. Stone also said that Tom Pavlik has done some legal work for EMS.
It was in August that Stone pulled plans to develop a retail strip center at the Esquire site, when McMenamin was pushing for a multiuse development including housing and offices. Stone said McMenamin wanted “a huge development that nobody’s going to build,” and he thinks an opportunity for the neighborhood was lost.
Stone said he considers McMenamin a “nice guy,” and his desire to see somebody else be alderman is not personal. And he said his support for a candidate “has no tie to whether I or anybody else develops the Esquire Theatre” property. He said he has no current involvement with the Esquire site.
McMenamin said there is a lot of neighborhood support for mixed-use development at the Esquire location. “And in the past four years, there’s no one that did more for Hy-Vee than I did,” McMenamin added. “He’s just wrong on the facts. … Chris Stone is about gambling, marijuana and an incomplete development at the corner of (Ash Street) and Sixth Street.”
McMenamin was referring to Iles Park Place, a five-building complex. Stone said 11,000 of 120,000 square feet are occupied, and “things are looking promising” to get the rest leased by the end of the year. He is part owner of the Lucy’s Place establishments, with seven Springfield locations featuring gambling machines.
As a lobbyist, Stone said, he’s a consultant for a company called Health Central that is trying to establish a medical marijuana dispensary in Springfield and cultivation centers and dispensaries elsewhere in the state.
Pavlik said she and Stone have been friends for several years. “Also, I am pro-development — not particularly any development Chris is doing,” she said. She was “very disappointed” that his proposal for the Esquire site didn’t come to fruition.
Pavlik also said that while the $5,000 from Stone’s company was “very generous,” she is “getting significant support from a lot of different people” and probably raised about $10,000 at a fundraiser last week.
In her campaign finance report for the three months ended Dec. 31, Pavlik reported $5,100 raised. She had $7,252 in the bank at the end of the year.
McMenamin raised $7,150 in the period and ended the year with nearly $26,700 in the bank. He got $3,300 from Margot Kremer, who he said is a retired widow and good friend who “follows the news very closely” and has donated to his campaigns over the years.
Higgins, owner of Maldaner’s Restaurant downtown, raised $6,060 during the final quarter of 2014, and he had just more than $6,300 in the bank at the end of the year. His largest donation was $1,000 from the political fund of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 965.
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While state law does set campaign finance limits in most cases, the Ward 7 race is not one where they are having an effect. This year’s limits to a candidate’s committee per election cycle include $5,400 from an individual and $10,800 from a corporation, labor organization or association.
Joe McMenamin for Ward 7 