{"id":575878,"date":"2010-05-22T22:38:11","date_gmt":"2010-05-23T02:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c60fd53ef01348179c7d8970c"},"modified":"2010-05-22T22:38:11","modified_gmt":"2010-05-23T02:38:11","slug":"inside-republican-governor-candidate-bill-bradys-business-deals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/575878","title":{"rendered":"Inside Republican governor candidate Bill Brady’s business deals"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Sunday print edition<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Inside Brady’s business deals<\/h2>\n

Governor hopeful has been through economic ups and downs<\/h3>\n

By David Heinzmann and Rick Pearson, Tribune reporters<\/p>\n

On the southwest fringe of Champaign along Interstate Highway 57 stands
\nthe Curtis Road interchange, its ornate limestone overpass and
\ndecorative red-brick towers surrounded by acres of open farmland.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nIt was envisioned as the catalyst for a massive residential and retail
\ndevelopment that would start with new homes built by Bill Brady, the
\nstate senator and Republican candidate for governor. Instead, it’s an
\noverpass to nowhere.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nBrady, a developer for 25 years, underestimated the cost of his leading
\nrole and then backed away when city officials refused to provide more
\ntaxpayer money. The deal fell apart in 2007, stalling other development,
\n and the land remains vacant.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nThe interchange represents the crossroads of Brady’s political and
\nbusiness careers. As the first part-time politician running for
\ngovernor in nearly 30 years, Brady contends that his experience running a
\n successful business will help him solve the state’s financial problems.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\n"I think people are looking for someone who understands the intricacies
\nof business, how you manage people, how you perform services," Brady
\nsaid.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nBut his family firm’s recent struggles and the failed Champaign
\ndevelopment offer voters a more complicated picture.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nPublic records and interviews with city officials show that Brady
\nmishandled the sewer project he promised to build, improvements that
\nother developers were counting on. In November, Brady sued the
\nengineering firm he hired. But last week he quietly dropped the lawsuit
\nand placed the blame on the city.\n<\/p>\n

The Curtis Road mess added to the hard times for a company that had made
\n Brady and his two brothers wealthy as they capitalized on a population
\nboom in Bloomington-Normal.
<\/br><\/p>\n

\nThe Brady family has been well-known in Bloomington’s business community
\n for nearly a half century. Bill Brady Sr., the candidate’s father,
\nstarted building homes in the mid-1960s.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nThe company grew into a multimillion-dollar enterprise, but Brady’s
\nfather overextended himself in the early 1980s. Years of losses and
\nsky-high interest rates pushed the company into bankruptcy in 1984 when
\nthe elder Brady couldn’t keep up payments on about $2 million in debts
\nto banks and contractors, according to court records.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nAt the time, Bill Jr. was just out of college, married and working at
\nthe family lumberyard. When the company emerged from bankruptcy in 1987,
\n young Bill was running the development side of the business, while his
\nfather took a back seat running the lumberyard.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nAs Bloomington flourished in the late 1980s and 1990s, the family built
\nsubdivisions with names like Waterford Estates and Fox Hollow. They
\nexpanded their real estate sales business, developed a shopping center
\nto feed the new neighborhoods and created a bustling office park where
\ntheir own businesses are based.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\n"That time frame was just booming years for Bloomington," said Jesse
\nSmart, who was mayor from 1985 to 1997 as the area’s population was
\nheading from 80,000 to more than 120,000 today. "It was just the hot
\nspot of the state. Those were the heydays for developers."
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nPublic records and interviews with downstate development professionals
\npaint a picture of a businessman who prospered from his deep roots in
\nthe city. Known even to low-level city workers as "Billy," Brady became
\nthe very public face of his family business, a member of
\nBloomington-Normal’s civic and business elite. That success translated
\ninto political capital for Brady, who was elected to the Illinois House
\nin 1992.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nKen Emmons, who retired as Bloomington’s city planner early last year,
\nsaid Brady was careful to maintain a solid public image.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\n"He doesn’t want to have a bad reputation, doesn’t want to alienate his
\ncustomers or the neighbors," Emmons said.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nIn fact, Brady has sometimes artfully avoided controversy.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nWhen he bought a parcel zoned for industrial development near an area of
\n single-family homes, he planned to develop the land with apartments.
\nInstead of doing the work himself, he sold the land to an Indiana
\ndeveloper who built subsidized housing in 2001. There was a rash of
\nopposition from nearby homeowners, but it was absorbed by the
\nout-of-town firm, Emmons said.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nAt its peak in 2006, Brady Homes had 34 employees and built nearly 200
\nhomes, according to Brady. But in the recession that started in 2007,
\nBrady Homes, Pinehurst Development and a handful of related firms the
\nfamily operates have stumbled.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nBrady’s personal tax returns, which he at first resisted disclosing,
\nshowed that the company has lost enough money over the last two years
\nthat he has not paid any income tax, even on his $78,000 salary from
\nthe General Assembly.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nIn an interview last week with the Tribune, Brady said he started
\nre-examining the company’s future during his failed 2006 campaign for
\ngovernor. He said he looked at the firm’s fundamentals and reorganized
\nthe business, with his brothers and partners laying off all but nine
\nworkers who last year built nearly 100 homes.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nAs demand for new housing waned in McLean County over the last decade,
\nBrady has looked harder for new business in other downstate markets. He
\nbuilt in Peoria and suburban Springfield. On the western border of
\nChampaign, Brady Homes started with a subdivision of houses and
\ntownhomes called The Cove.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nBrady’s next big project in town would be a more than 300-home
\nsubdivision called Prairie Creek designed to capitalize on plans the
\nstate announced in 2002 to build a new I-57 interchange at Curtis Road.
\nPlanners and developers saw the Curtis Road corridor as the next wave of
\n expansion in Champaign. Brady saw the potential as well, and sought to
\nsecure options on 120 acres of farmland adjacent to the interchange
\nsite.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nThe homes Brady planned would lead the way for additional development
\nthat would include shopping centers, restaurants and office buildings
\nthe city had earmarked for the four quadrants surrounding the highway
\nintersection.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nIn 2003, the state legislature gave the local government authority to
\ntake land for sewers along Curtis Road east of Brady’s property. A final
\n vote to enact the law occurred Nov. 4, as Brady was securing options on
\n the land he planned to develop. He voted for it.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nThree years later, when the legislature re-authorized the sewer plans,
\nwell after Brady began acquiring the land, he again voted in favor of
\nthe measure. In 2007, Brady also voted for similar legislation allowing
\nChampaign and other local governments to seize property to build their
\nshare of the interchange.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nAlthough the actions would help move the interchange project along, and
\naffect the value of his land, Brady did not recuse himself.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\n"If I felt I had a conflict, I wouldn’t have done that," Brady said.
\nLater, in an e-mail, Brady said he believed the legislation had no
\ndirect effect on his Champaign property.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nChampaign officials were originally hesitant to allow developers into
\nthe area because there was no sewer service. But when Brady offered to
\nbuild the pumping station and sewer connection to jump-start his
\ndevelopment, the city cut a deal with him with provisions to pay Brady
\nback a portion of the costs down the road.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nBut problems started early because Brady moved forward without an
\naccurate understanding of what the work would cost, said Bruce Knight,
\nChampaign’s planning director. Brady’s original $1.27 million cost
\nestimate was based on faulty assumptions, Knight said.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nWhen proper bids were finally done, Brady’s share of the cost grew by
\nmore than $1 million, and he balked at doing the work without getting
\nmore money from taxpayers, public records show.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\n"We made a deal with Brady, in which clearly we were capping our
\ninvestment at (a certain) level," Knight said. More money from taxpayers
\n was not "justifiable," Knight said.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nBrady contended Champaign officials were supposed to cover the higher
\ncosts.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\n"Our attorney said the city had the right to nix the deal if they didn’t
\n like how the bids came in. The city nixed the deal," Brady said. "They
\ntold us they didn’t have the money to pay it at the cost it came in. We
\nsaid, ‘That wasn’t our agreement. You agreed to reimburse us,’ and they
\nsaid ‘No.’"
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nKnight said Brady’s assertion is incorrect.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nAs Brady backed away from the plans, Champaign officials met with two
\nother developers who had planned to piggyback off the sewer system for
\ntheir own residential projects.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nSoon, one of the other developers, Darren Rogers, was taking the lead in
\n trying to get the development back on track. In an e-mail to a city
\nengineer, he blamed Brady for the mess over pumping station costs.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\n"Engineering costs are too high primarily due to Brady changing the
\ndesign so many times. He needs to pay for a significant portion of those
\n costs," Rogers said to Roland White, Champaign city engineer.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nIn the end, no one could put a deal together to build the pumping
\nstation, and as the bottom dropped out of the economy in 2008, the whole
\n project was put on a back burner.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\nThroughout the process, city officials said they had difficulty getting
\n Brady’s attention at critical times.
<\/br>
\n
<\/br>
\n"He was often hard to reach because he was busy with other things,"
\nKnight said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Sunday print edition: Inside Brady’s business deals Governor hopeful has been through economic ups and downs By David Heinzmann and Rick Pearson, Tribune reporters On the southwest fringe of Champaign along Interstate Highway 57 stands the Curtis Road interchange, its ornate limestone overpass and decorative red-brick towers surrounded by acres of open farmland. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3992,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-575878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3992"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}