![]() ![]() ![]() To plead their case before the board they hired Kevin O’Keefe, a feisty and well-connected Loop lawyer. Of course, Sears disputes that the property is underassessed. For that matter, most downtown real estate is in that category.” Sears has been underassessed and paying less than their fair share of property taxes for this whole decade. That’s about 23 more million for the school board, 15 more million for the city, and 17 more million for other units of local government. “If the Sears Tower were properly valued at $1.1 billion, it would generate about $78 million in property taxes. “If Sears is not properly valued, units of government are shortchanged on their property-tax revenue,” says Patrick Quinn, the public-interest lawyer who took Duffy’s case. That means Sears, Roebuck and Company paid only $23.5 million in property taxes–less than a third of what it would have paid if the building had been accurately assessed, Duffy charges. The Sears Tower is up for sale with an asking price of about $1.1 billion, but in 1987 Cook County assessor Thomas Hynes set its fair market value at $329 million. In this case, James Duffy, a home owner from the northwest side, had charged that the Sears Tower was underassessed. The setting: a stuffy, fluorescent-lit hearing room on the sixth floor of City Hall. The showdown took place at a meeting last month of the Cook County Board of Appeals–the two-person body that hears complaints that property has been under- or overassessed. Best of Chicago 2022: Sports & Recreationįrom the start, it was a Chicago version of David versus Goliath: a middle-class taxpayer, represented by one rather disheveled public-interest attorney, up against a giant corporation, with its money, clout, and legions of lawyers. ![]()
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