(no link)
Chicago Tribune - Sunday, May 5, 1985
Author: Article by Nick Thimmesch.
Just about everything Philip Klutznick has done in his 77 years seems to
be upper case. He has been Secretary of Commerce under Jimmy Carter,
Ambassador to the United Nations` Economic and Social Council under President Kennedy, Federal Housing Commissioner under FDR, President-emeritus of the
World Jewish Congress and Honorary President of B`nai B`rith International.
(snip)
Klutznick`s success with Marshall Field led to the building of Water
Tower Place, a $180 million, 74-story amalgamation of stores, shops, offices, apartments, theaters and the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. ``I got a call one day from a man named John Moore, who told me Phil had signed a $10 million contract to
start Water Tower Place,`` recalls Newton Minow, Klutznick`s attorney. ``He
told me Phil had written a four-line agreement on an envelope and signed it.
Moore sent a photostat. When I saw it, I knew it was Phil`s signature, so I
called him in New York, where he was in a meeting.
``Phil said, `I meant to tell you, Newt, but I didn`t want the deal to
evaporate.` I told him that wasn`t the way we wrote contracts today, but it
was binding. And that`s how Water Tower Place was bought.``
Klutznick`s firm, Urban Investment and Development Co., was sold to Aetna Life & Casualty Co. in 1970, and in 1984 was bought by JMB Realty Corp. of
Chicago. But Klutznick didn`t retire. He plunged into other projects, the most notable being Dearborn Park, begun in January of 1974. The plan is to complete a 3,000-unit, $250 million complex of middle-income housing on a 51-acre site in the South Loop near the historic Dearborn Station.
``We are doing inner-city development—the big push of the `80s—and this is the start,`` Klutznick said at the time. Recently, he explained how he and the other developers got the Dearborn Park project moving. ``We went to see
Mayor Daley ,`` Klutznick recalls. ``It was John Perkins, president of
Continental Illinois National Bank; Thomas Ayers , the retired chairman of
Commonwealth Edison; and myself. Daley just asked, `What do you need?` and I
told him an agreement for the land. He called in a city official and told him, `I don`t want anything put in their way, all right?` Then he told us that
if we had any trouble, come right back and see him. There was no delay in
working with Daley . We had to renegotiate with the city, but it took 60
minutes and a handshake with him, instead of six months with someone else.``
(snip)
//
SUCH A DEAL - ILLINOIS AND CHICAGO STRUT THEIR STUFF TO THE WORLD
Chicago Tribune - Sunday, February 2, 1986
Author: Article by Mitchell Locin, a SUNDAY, Magazine staff writer.
EXCERPT
... in 1976 that Mayor Richard J. Daley created the
city`s Economic Development Commission, naming Commonwealth Edison`s chairman, Thomas Ayers , to head it.
//
`We are doing inner-city development—the big push of the `80s—and this is the start,`` Klutznick said at the time. Recently, he explained how he and the other developers got the Dearborn Park project moving. ``We went to see Mayor Daley ,`` Klutznick recalls. ``It was John Perkins, president of Continental Illinois National Bank; Thomas Ayers , the retired chairman of Commonwealth Edison; and myself. Daley just asked, `What do you need?` and I told him an agreement for the land. He called in a city official and told him, `I don`t want anything put in their way, all right?` Then he told us that if we had any trouble, come right back and see him. There was no delay in working with Daley . We had to renegotiate with the city, but it took 60 minutes and a handshake with him, instead of six months with someone else.``
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Richard/Richard Daley - Thomas/Bill Ayers - Klutznick/Bettylu Saltzman - Mikva (Law clerk: Kagan) - Newton/Martha Minow - Paul Simon - Pritzker family - Axelrod - Rahm
(no link)
CHICAGO JEWS NURTURED OBAMA CAREER - HOPE RISING FOR TRUE MIDEAST PEACE ACCORD
Sun Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL) - Sunday, December 14, 2008
Author: Tom Hundley Chicago Tribune
Writer Toni Morrison famously dubbed Bill Clinton “the first black president” - a title he fervently embraced.
Abner Mikva, the Chicago Democratic Party stalwart and former Clinton White House counsel, offers a variation on that theme. “If Clinton was our first black president, then Barack Obama is our first Jewish president,” says Mikva, who was among the first to spot the potential of the young law school graduate with the odd name.
(snip)
Putting aside which of the three great Abrahamic religions can lay claim to Obama’s soul, it is clear that his political career, from its South Side Chicago inception to the audacious run for the White House, was nurtured and enabled by a close-knit network of Chicago Jews.
Mikva and his friend Newton Minow, the former Federal Communications Commission chairman and Kennedy-era New Frontiersman, were there at the beginning. Minow first heard about Obama in 1988 from his daughter Martha, a professor at Harvard, where Obama was studying law. Minow, senior counsel at Sidley Austin, offered him an internship and later a job at the firm, but Obama declined, saying he was planning to go into politics.
When Obama graduated, Mikva, then a U.S. appeals court judge in Washington, tried to lure him with a prestigious clerkship, but Obama turned him down, too. That, according to Mikva, took some chutzpah.
Both Mikva and Minow say they sensed back then that Obama was something special. They made a point of staying in touch.
Obama’s circle of Jewish patrons and advisers widened further in 1992 when he became involved in a voter registration drive that brought him into contact with Bettylu Saltzman, a liberal activist (and daughter of the late Philip Klutznick , a former commerce secretary and shopping mall developer). Saltzman says she knew from the moment she met Obama that he would someday be president. She introduced him to David Axelrod, who saw something similar.
Axelrod designed the strategy in which Obama first won the backing of white liberals and then reached out to blacks. Jews made up a significant number of the first constituency.
“As Jews got to know him, they recognized a kindred spirit, not someone who came down from Mars,” Mikva said.
Rabbi Arnold Wolf, of KAM Isaiah Israel synagogue across the street from Obama’s Chicago home, was another early backer. Like Mikva, he sees what he called Obama’s “Jewish side.”
“Obama is from nowhere and everywhere - just like the Jews. He's black, he's white, he's American, he's Asian, he's African - and so are we,” Wolf said.
Certainly, Obama is comfortable with Jews. Axelrod will remain at his side as senior adviser, and Rep. Rahm Emanuel will be White House chief of staff. Billionaire Penny Pritzker , who has known Obama since the mid-1990s and served as his campaign finance chairwoman, was said to be under consideration for commerce secretary until she took herself out of the running.
(snip)
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http://harvardmagazine.com/breaking-news/martha-minow-appointed-dean-harvard-law-school
Martha Minow Appointed Dean of Harvard Law School
President Drew Faust has appointed Smith professor of law Martha Minow dean of Harvard Law School, effective July 1; she succeeds Elena Kagan ...