13-02-2025
Today in Chicago History: Parking rates increase due to ‘boondoggle' meter deal
Here's a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Feb. 13, according to the Tribune's archives.
Is an important event missing from this date? Email us.
Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
High temperature: 63 degrees (1938)
Low temperature: Minus 18 degrees (1905)
Precipitation: 0.78 inches (1949)
Snowfall: 8.8 inches (2007)
1861: Abraham Lincoln was officially declared winner of the 1860 presidential election as electors cast their ballots.
2009: Chicago residents dug a little deeper into their wallets to pay for city parking, as rates increased due to the city's lopsided parking meter deal. Mayor Richard M. Daley's administration sealed a deal in late 2008 to lease Chicago's parking meter operation for 75 years in exchange for an upfront payment of more than $1 billion — an arrangement now infamous as a boondoggle.
Daley quickly used much of the money to plug budget gaps.
Critics have long blasted the deal as a shortsighted fix that stripped Chicago of a valuable public asset — the meters once provided the city around $20 million annually in net income — and will make it difficult for Chicago to alter roadways for decades to come.
Chicago Parking Meters LLC already has recouped its original $1.15 billion investment, plus hundreds of millions more and counting. The private firm made $150.9 million in parking revenues in 2023, according to an annual audit by accounting firm KPMG.
2018: Pitcher Yu Darvish agreed to a six-year, $126 million contract with the Chicago Cubs.
In Evanston, Darvish and his wife paid $4.55 million in May 2018 for a vintage house on Lake Michigan.
The following year, a controversy arose after the couple was sued by a neighboring couple for installing a solid cedar fence that blocked the neighbors' views of Lake Michigan. The couple suing the Darvishes claimed that the fence violated an accord reached when the Darvishes' neighbors agreed not to object to a proposal for a 6-foot fence, provided that it was a wrought iron fence. The two parties settled the matter in October 2020. The Darvishes listed the home for sale in 2022.
Darvish was beset by injuries in his first season but threw well in 2019 and 2020. He finished second to Trevor Bauer for the National League Cy Young Award in 2020.
The Cubs traded him to the San Diego Padres at the end of 2020.
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