City Hall going after controversial Near West Side parking lot owner

City Hall wants to punish a Near West Side parking lot owner, who had been parking cars on city-owned land for years without paying rent, for failing to meet the terms of a settlement deal struck eight months ago.

Following inquiries from the Chicago Sun-Times, city inspectors have found Peoples Stadium Park LLC failed to get permits for signs hanging over the sidewalk, designate wheelchair accessible spaces and erect the required fencing around the lot on the northwest corner of Madison and Paulina, near the United Center.

"Key markers of the plan have been executed, and although the company is no longer operating on city property, more work needed to be done to ensure compliance," according to an email from Lilia Chacon, spokeswoman for the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection. So the agency is asking the city's license discipline commission to punish Peoples.

Under the settlement, the city would give the company licenses to park cars in the 1700 block of Madison and Warren streets, while Peoples, owned by the family of attorney Ronald Shudnow, would pay the city $180,000 and make improvements in six months.

But City Hall has refused to issue business licenses to Peoples Stadium because the company owed the city $11,384, a debt Peoples paid on July 17, about three weeks after the Sun-Times sought records to determine if the company had lived up to the settlement.

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