City Code Problems Found At Daley Nephew's Warehouse

Candy Basselen has run a steel fabricating company on the Southwest Side for many years.

Last summer, she moved it a few blocks south, and City Hall told her she had to get a new business license.

But they wouldn't give her one.

The reason?

The warehouse she moved into didn't have enough shrubs, trees and other landscaping. And there was no wrought-iron fence, one of the hallmarks of Mayor Daley's beautification efforts.

Until these landscaping faux pas were corrected, city officials told Basselen she couldn't get a business license.

None of this made sense to Basselen because she was just a tenant. She didn't understand why the city wasn't leaning on the warehouse owners to fix the landscaping violations.

And, if shrubs, trees and fencing were such a big deal, how come the city was leasing space in the warehouse to park dozens of dump trucks.

"If the city knew there were code violations, why was the city operating out of the building,'' Basselen says. "The city was utilizing a building they themselves said wasn't up to code.''

So who owns that building? The mayor's nephew Robert Vanecko and his partners. They bought it with some of the millions of dollars Vanecko manages for five city pension funds.

Vanecko's pension investment company, DV Urban Realty Partners, is under investigation by a federal grand jury and the city's inspector general who want to know how the pension funds came to invest $68 million with Vanecko and his partner Allison S. Davis. The mayor has said he's unhappy with his nephew. So Vanecko says he's getting out of the deal by Wednesday.

Vanecko and Davis used pension money to buy the warehouse on Nov. 27, 2007. DV Urban Realty owns 90 percent of the warehouse. The rest is owned by Sydney Partners LLC headed by Jeff Josephs and Anthony Burns.

They have yet to correct the landscaping code violations that City Hall wanted Basselen, their tenant, to take care of.

"As it relates to the building violation, it is very simple,'' Jeff Josephs, one of Vanecko's partners in the warehouse deal, wrote in an e-mail to the Sun-Times. "The city zoning department has advised us that we need to add a wrought-iron fence to the front of the building and add some shrubs, plus blacktop a small portion of rock in the back. Less than $75,000 of work. No different than what they are requiring numerous owners who own city industrial property to complete.''

Josephs says they have "hired a landscape architect to take care of the work. We received the alderman's approval on the plan that was to be submitted to the zoning department.''

There's still no landscaping at the warehouse at 3348 S. Pulaski. But city officials dropped their six-month spat with Basselen in April, agreeing to give her a business license. She says it's too late. Her business is out of business.

Without a business license, Basselen says she couldn't renew her city certification as a woman-owned business enterprise. That WBE certification gave her business, Springfield Service Supply Company, an advantage in winning work on city contracts.

Basselen, 61, had threatened to sue her landlords for failing to correct the code violations that had kept her from getting a city business license. They reached a settlement in April. The five-year lease has been torn up. And the landlords agreed to pay Basselen $35,000.

"During this process Springfield Supply subsequently advised us that she would like to be let out of her lease as her business was not faring well,'' Josephs says. "We came to an agreement that included returning to Springfield the security deposit. We did this because it was the right and humane thing to do for a person whose business was not doing well due to the downturn in the economy.'' Basselen says that's not the case. "I could not bid work in September because I didn't have a business license,'' Basselen says. "From September to April, I couldn't bid any work. Ninety percent of the work I do is for the city of Chicago. Police stations. Fire stations. Libraries. Schools.''