The winter air may be crisp, but around Park Ridge City Hall it’s also redolent with the smell of sweetheart deals.  Napleton Cadillac is inhaling the sweet scent of a potential $2 Million windfall sales tax-sharing agreement on its new property (formerly Tom Noe), while PRC continues to sniff around for $400,000 from the City to clean up the contamination on the old Napleton site it intends to buy for the construction of more condos.

The noses of cops and ordinary citizens alike are perking up to the perfumed breeze wafting in from Des Plaines along with rumors of a new “imported” police chief who is the wife of one of Mayor Frimark’s friends and campaign contributors.  And who can miss that down-home smell of meat a’cookin’ as the City continues its search for some more private land it can take off the tax rolls for the big new cop shop.

As any long-time Illinois resident knows, whenever you smell a “deal” you can usually find a campaign donor – often one of the heftier contributors to a heavyweight politician – lurking in the shadows waiting to cash in.  When it comes to Park Ridge politicians, the big dog is indisputably Mayor Howard Frimark.

And when it comes to Frimark contributors, the big dog looks to be the family of Sam Markos [pdf], owner/operator of Crystal Palace Banquets and, it appears, several other businesses whose principal offices are listed as 2648 Dempster, Park Ridge [pdf].  The Markos Family “Empire,” along with the contributions each entity made to the “Friends for Frimark for Mayor” (FFF) campaign fund, include:

·  Sam Spiros Markos [pdf] (and “Spiros Sam Markos”) ($3,000);
·  Crystal Palace Banquets, Inc. [pdf] ($4,200);
·  Crystal Landings LLC [pdf] ($3,500);
·  ENK Brentwood LLC [pdf] ($1,500);
·  Market Square Lot 2 LLC [pdf] ($2,000);
·  Market Square Schaumburg LLC [pdf] ($4,500 ); and
·  Markos Management Corp. [pdf] ($2,000).

The grand total: A whopping $20,700 to FFF between December 17, 2004 and December 27, 2006.

From what we can see, no other contributor or group of related contributors to FFF comes close to matching that number.  But the Markos Family interests also hedged their bets by making $6,500 in contributions – from “Spiros P. Markos” ($1,500), Market Square Schaumburg LLC ($3,000) and ENK Brentwood LLC ($2,000) – to Frimark’s opponent, Michael Tinaglia, putting them among Tinaglia’s largest contributors as well.

That kind of hedging also suggests that the Markos interests may be more like “players” than like “good government” types, especially now that we’re getting a whiff of the newest aroma emanating from City Hall in connection with this week’s Park Ridge Zoning Board of Appeals meeting agenda [pdf].  That agenda indicates that somebody has applied for “several variances” of a “major” nature for the property at 2648 Dempster Street – the Markos property – “as part of the construction of a new CVS Pharmacy.”

The City’s website has posted no other reports or documentation to explain anything more about the variances being sought, or what the exact nature of Thursday night’s ZBA proceeding will be.  Maybe that shouldn’t be surprising given Park Ridge’s “A Culture Of Secrecy” and the fact that it took more than a year from the date Trader Joe’s signed its lease in Uptown for the City to admit that Trader Joe’s had committed to a store in Park Ridge, but it is troubling nonetheless.

These variances for CVS will be considered by the sitting ZBA members [pdf], who serve as our new zoning code’s enforcers in major variance matters such as this.  And if you don’t know what the ZBA procedures are in connection with major variances, you might want to take a look at the relevant sections of the City’s new Zoning Ordinance [pdf].

A CVS pharmacy may be a fine addition to the northwest edge of Park Ridge; and if that provides a nice pay day for the Markos Family so much the better – so long as that pay day doesn’t come at the expense of Park Ridge taxpayers or violate the zoning ordinance.  If it does, you can be sure the Watchdog will pick up the scent.