Wow! A 400% profit on a million dollar land deal in just 14 months. Hiring people with the right connections definitely pays off in Chicago. And don’t worry about Chicago going bankrupt under billions of dollars of debt. The check will be cashed and the money gone well before that happens. The Chicago Sun-Times’s The Watch Dogs column, written by Tim Novak tells us. The property doesn’t look like much — a weed-strewn eyesore at the northwest corner of 21st and Prairie in the shadow of McCormick Place. But the vacant piece of land proved to be very profitable for Drapac Group LLC, Australian developers who hired Langdon D. Neal, one of the city’s most politically connected lawyers. Neal was a registered lobbyist for Drapac when it paid $1,020,000 for the 21,857-square-foot property in the shadow of McCormick Place in May 2013 — its first deal in Chicago. Little more than a year later, Neal’s firm helped another client, the...(Read Full Post)