Soon after announcing he would not run for another term, Mayor Richard M. Daley went on a trip to Asia that he said was aimed at rounding up investors for infrastructure projects in the city.
“I firmly believe there’s enough money around the world that would like to invest in infrastructure for a decent return and tax credits right here in America,” he told reporters on Sept. 17.
The mayor, a longtime advocate of privatization deals, said he wanted to find investors for a range of public projects, like sewer upgrades and high-speed rail service between the Loop and O’Hare. After returning, Mr. Daley provided few details of the trip, saying only that Chicago had all sorts of overseas suitors. “There are many, many interests,” he said.
Yet mayoral press secretary Jackie Heard, who accompanied Mr. Daley on the trip, said he did not hold any formal talks with investors.
“If you’re wondering if he sat down with individual businessmen and made a pitch about something specific, he did not,” Ms. Heard said in a recent interview. “There were no meetings for the express purpose of discussing infrastructure in Chicago.”
Mr. Daley spent the week of Sept. 18 to 24 in Shanghai and in the South Korean cities of Pusan and Seoul, according to a copy of his itinerary provided to the Chicago News Cooperative in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. He met with political leaders, visited war memorials and attended a concert by Otis Clay, the Chicago soul singer.
He attended two scheduled meetings with members of the business community. One was a roundtable discussion with business leaders in Shanghai, the other a breakfast meeting hosted by the Korean Chamber of Commerce and the American Chamber of Commerce in Seoul.
On both occasions Mr. Daley delivered Power-Point presentations, but it is not clear what they consisted of. The mayor’s office provided what it said were copies: 24 pages of photos of Chicago, including schools, parks, local businesses, and the city’s skyline. Ms. Heard said the presentations did not include any written text because the mayor spoke to the business groups without notes while the photos were shown.
Ms. Heard described the trip as an opportunity for Mr. Daley to “sell” Chicago. “And I don’t mean privatization or anything like that,” she said, “but as a destination for travelers, as a destination for businesses.”
The last partnership the Daley administration forged with private investors was the parking meter lease, presented to the City Council in late 2008.