Bryant eclipses 30,000, Lakers beat Hornets 103-87

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Kobe Bryant grinned and uttered the word "irony" as he considered the fact that the team that drafted him nearly 17 years ago was his opponent on the night he eclipsed a scoring milestone to join an exclusive club of NBA greats.

It's easy to forget that it was the Hornets who drafted and then traded Bryant away back in 1996.

In the years since, the Hornets have changed cities, from Charlotte to New Orleans, and Bryant has become one of five players in NBA history to score 30,000 points, surpassing the mark with a 29-point performance that helped the Lakers to a 103-87 triumph Wednesday night.

"It's funny how sports always seems to kind of have that connectivity, in some shape, form or fashion," Bryant said. "It just always seems to come full circle."

Bryant entered the game needing 13 points to make history and no one doubted he would get it. NBA Commissioner David Stern, who happened to be making a scheduled visit with new Hornets owner Tom Benson, offered Bryant a congratulatory hand shake before tip-off.

Bryant had 17 points by halftime, eclipsing the 30,000-mark with a short jumper in the paint over Robin Lopez late in the first half. That might have been the least spectacular of his baskets, which included the usual array of soaring dunks, demoralizing transition 3-pointers and twisting, off-balance jumpers.

The only other players to score more than 30,000 are Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Karl Malone, Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain.

"It's pretty awesome," Bryant said. "These are players I respect tremendously and obviously grew up idolizing and watching and learned a great deal from."

When Lakers coach Mike D'Antoni was asked before tipoff about Bryant's impending milestone, the coach joked, "That just means he is old."

In fact, at 34, Bryant is younger than the other four were when they hit the mark, but Bryant also turned pro at 18, and is in his 17th season.

"Honestly, I don't know why I'm still working as hard as I am after 17 years," Bryant said. "That's the thing that I'm most proud of — every year, every day working hard at it. It's a lot of years, a lot of work."

Dwight Howard added 18 points and five blocked shots for the Lakers, who trailed 48-47 at halftime, but seized control with a 13-0 run to open the third quarter, and the lead grew as large as 20 in the fourth.

Ryan Anderson scored 31 points, hitting 5 of 8 3-pointers for the Hornets, who were playing their ninth straight game without top overall draft choice Anthony Davis. Greivis Vasquez added 16 points, while Lopez scored 15 points and blocked five shots.

Antawn Jamison scored 15 and Metta World Peace 11, and Chris Duhon had 10 assists for Los Angeles, which is playing without Steve Nash and Pau Gasol and won for only the second time on the road this season. The Hornets fell to 3-7 at home and lost for the 10th time in 12 games overall.

The Hornets led from early in the first quarter until halftime, going up by as many as eight points when Al-Farouq Aminu slammed down an alley-oop lob from Vasquez, energizing the largest crowd of the season at the New Orleans Arena.

Bryant helped the Lakers trim their deficit after that, hitting five free throws and his milestone on 3-foot jumper in the last 2:15 of the second quarter.

Jamison opened the third-quarter onslaught with 3, Howard followed with a fast-break layup and Bryant had two straight fast-break dunks, one of which he created with a steal. Howard finished the surge with a layup.

"I just didn't think our defense was there, especially that first five or six minutes of the third quarter," Hornets coach Monty Williams said. "Our defense was really poor, and we can't afford those lapses."

After the game, Bryant sat in his locker, reflecting on the elite company he now keeps in NBA history, and the things he sees in younger, prolific scoring stars like Oklahoma City's Kevin Durant, whom the Lakers will face on Friday night, and who could very well join the 30,000-point club at the rate he's going.

One common characteristic, Bryant said, is an apparent immunity to both pressure and criticism.

"Scorers kind of have a fighter-pilot mentality. We're a different breed," he said. "But there are different positions. We scored in a myriad of ways. We all went about it differently in different situations. It's fun to see."

NOTES: Before attending the game, Stern toured the headquarters of the New Orleans Saints, also owned by Benson, and saw how Benson's plans for the NBA franchise were taking shape. New construction has begun on additions that will also accommodate Hornets offices and practice courts. .... Stern said he was pleased to be able to also see Bryant surpass the 30,000-point mark in person. "As a talent, a competitor, I think that he is up there on the pedestal with Michael Jordan," Stern said. "He is one of the greatest." ... Stern also discussed the possibility of a team name change for New Orleans, something Benson has said he wants since buying the club last spring. Stern says the club has not yet applied for a name change but that the league would likely accept whatever name the Hornets want and expedite the transition.

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Celebrations planned as Wash. legalizes marijuana

SEATTLE (AP) — Legal marijuana possession becomes a reality under Washington state law on Thursday, and some people planned to celebrate the new law by breaking it.

Voters in Washington and Colorado last month made those the first states to decriminalize and regulate the recreational use of marijuana. Washington's law takes effect Thursday and allows adults to have up to an ounce of pot — but it bans public use of marijuana, which is punishable by a fine, just like drinking in public.

Nevertheless, some people planned to gather at 12:01 a.m. PST Thursday to smoke in public beneath Seattle's Space Needle. Others planned a midnight party outside the Seattle headquarters of Hempfest, the 21-year-old festival that attracts tens of thousands of pot fans every summer.

"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."

In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.

That law also takes effect Thursday, when gay and lesbian couples can start picking up their wedding certificates and licenses at county auditors' offices. Those offices in King County, the state's largest and home to Seattle, and Thurston County, home to the state capital of Olympia, planned to open the earliest, at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, to start issuing marriage licenses. Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.

The Seattle Police Department provided this public marijuana use enforcement guidance to its officers via email Wednesday night: "Until further notice, officers shall not take any enforcement action — other than to issue a verbal warning — for a violation of Initiative 502."

Thanks to a 2003 law, marijuana enforcement remains the department's lowest priority. Even before I-502 passed on Nov. 6, police rarely busted people at Hempfest, despite widespread pot use, and the city attorney here doesn't prosecute people for having small amounts of marijuana.

Officers will be advising people to take their weed inside, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."

Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.

But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.

The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.

"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress" — a non-issue, since the measures passed in Washington and Colorado don't "nullify" federal law, which federal agents remain free to enforce.

The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.

That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.

Colorado's measure, as far as decriminalizing possession goes, is set to take effect by Jan. 5. That state's regulatory scheme is due to be up and running by October 2013.

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Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

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Snooki, JWOWW host MTV's New Year's Eve show

LOS ANGELES (AP) — New York's Times Square is getting a little bit Jersey for New Year's Eve.

MTV says "Jersey Shore" stars Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi and Jenni "JWOWW" Farley and comedian Jeff Dye will host the network's live New Year's Eve special from Times Square.

"MTV's Club NYE 2013" will also feature performances from Ke$ha, Ne-Yo, Sean Kingston, Rita Ora and others. Ke$ha described the final night of the year as a time when people come together to celebrate "in a sweaty, drunken, dance-fueled orgy of bliss."

Polizzi said she is hoping to use "a leopard bedazzled microphone" for her hosting duties.

The special is set to air at 11 p.m. Eastern on Dec. 31.

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Clock running out for owners of prime parcels near McCormick Place

The development team behind a long-stalled plan to build hotels and restaurants just north of McCormick Place suffered a serious setback in federal bankruptcy court on Wednesday afternoon.

Judge Jack Schmetterer granted a motion by lender CenterPoint Properties Trust to reject the latest development plan of property owner Olde Prairie Block Owner LLC, which is led by developers Pamela Gleichman, Karl Norberg and Gunnar Falk.

Schmetterer said Olde Prairie failed to show its plans were financially plausible, noting its pledges from investors were highly conditional.

"It's a maybe situation," he said. He gave them 10 days to produce a more solid plan.

"I urge them to take their best shot, because it is the last one they will get," he said. The next hearing is Dec. 17.

Gleichman said she is confident she can get more iron-clad commitments from her team's investment partners within that time frame.

If Schmetterer dismisses the bankruptcy case at the next hearing, it would open the door for a foreclosure auction of the property. This would make it possible for the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, the state-city agency that owns McCormick Place, or other parties, to bid for the properties located on the north side of Cermak Road, across the street from the authority's administrative offices and the West Building of McCormick Place.

McCormick Place officials are aiming to vastly expand the amenities surrounding the convention complex to include more hotels, restaurants, entertainment venues and an arena that could host large-scale corporate assemblies and potentially collegiate sports such as DePaul Blue Demons basketball.

DePaul University, which would like to bring its men's basketball back to the city from its current home at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, is weighing a number of sites. McCormick Place and United Center officials have acknowledged talks with the university.

Opposition to an arena on the Olde Prairie blocks surfaced this week, with the Prairie District Neighborhood Alliance writing a letter stating an arena would be out of character in the historic residential area and would create traffic problems. Ald. Robert Fioretti, whose 2nd ward includes McCormick Place, has expressed opposition to an arena on that site as well.

kbergen@tribune.com | Twitter @kathy_bergen

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Classes resume today as suburban teachers end strike

Teachers in Community Unit District 300 reached a deal with the school board late Tuesday to end a one-day walkout in the large far northwest suburban school district.

Talks had broken down late Monday, prompting the district's more than 1,200 teachers to go on strike Tuesday and leaving more than 20,000 students out of class.

School board member Joe Stevens announced after 9 p.m. Tuesday that, following talks that resumed at 2 p.m., the two sides has struck a three-year deal. No other details were immediately provided, but a union official called the agreement "fair to the teachers and responsible to the taxpayers."

Stevens said no further details would be released until the deal is ratified by the union and the school board. A board vote isn't expected until Dec. 18 at the earliest.

Just hours earlier, a union official had reported little progress at the resumed talks.

District 300, based in Carpentersville, was the latest among at least six Chicago-area school systems — including Chicago Public Schools — whose teachers have gone on strike this school year. Many of the same issues — class size, pay and benefits, equity of compensation compared to similar districts — have been repeated, as school boards seek new ways to control spending amid new mandates from Springfield and more modest tax receipts than before the economic downturn.

Tuesday, much of the public back-and-forth between the union and district officials was over class size. Currently, elementary classes are capped at 33 to 37 students, according to district figures, but some high school classes top 40 students, teachers said.

“You can't teach equitably that way,” Tom Domenz, an art teacher at Jacobs High in Algonquin, said from the picket line Tuesday. “Classes are all over the board. It's not fair to the kids. Parents are paying the same taxes and (students) are not getting the same attention.”

Steve Pittner, a seventh-grade social studies teacher at Algonquin Middle School, said there has been “tremendous support” from parents and teachers. Students also were seen joining the picket line.

“They got to do something about the class size,” Pittner said while picketing at Algonquin Road and Main Street. “(Large classes) are not creating a culture of learning that's conducive for our students. This is the worst I've seen it. As far as class size goes, this is bad.”

But district officials said they offered a deal to teachers on Monday in which class sizes would be capped next year at 27 students in kindergarten through second grade and 30 students in grades three to five. The plan would also add 60 new teachers throughout the district.

Williamson, however, said those class sizes aren’t low enough to satisfy teachers. He also said teachers want an increase in their base salary.

The district counters that the union returned with new salary demands after the school board made its offer to lower class sizes. The district say it has offered teachers raises of 3 percent this year, 2 percent next year and 3 percent in the following — figures that include both base pay and “step increase,” additional raises that teachers in most Chicago-area districts receive each year for adding another year of seniority.

Union officials have also argued that teachers are underpaid compared to other suburban districts, according to a statement on the teachers union website.

Of the teachers strikes that have occurred so far this year in the Chicago area, Evergreen Park District 124’s was the longest, lasting 10 days.

Chicago Public School teachers were off the job for seven days, and Lake Forest High School teachers for five days. Strikes in Crystal Lake-based Prairie Grove District 46 and Highland Park-based North Shore District 112 also each lasted for one day before deals were reached.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com

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EU imposes record $1.92 billion cartel fine on Philips, five others

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Philips, LG Electronics, Samsung SDI and three other firms were fined a record 1.47 billion euros ($1.92 billion) by EU antitrust regulators for fixing prices of TV and monitor cathode-ray tubes for nearly a decade.

The European Commission slapped the biggest penalty, of 313.4 million euros, on Dutch-based Philips on Wednesday. LG Electronics came in second with a 295.6 million euro fine.

The EU competition authority fined Panasonic Corp 157.5 million euros, Samsung SDI 150.8 million euros, Toshiba Corp. 28 million euros, and French company Technicolor 38.6 million euros.

Two Panasonic joint ventures were also fined. Taiwanese firm Chunghwa Picture Tubes blew the whistle on the cartels in TV and computer monitors and escaped a fine.

The two cartels, one involving TVs and the other computer monitors, operated worldwide between 1996 and 2006, during which company executives discussed how to fix prices and share markets at "green meetings", so-called because the events often ended with a round of golf.

"These cartels for cathode ray tubes are 'textbook cartels': they feature all the worst kinds of anti-competitive behavior that are strictly forbidden to companies doing business in Europe," EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in a statement.

He said the violations were especially harmful for consumers, as cathode ray tubes accounted for 50 to 70 percent of the price of a screen.

Cathode ray tubes have largely been replaced by more advanced display technologies such as liquid-crystal display (LCD), plasma display and organic light-emitting diodes.

The biggest fine prior to the cathode-ray tube cartel was 1.38 billion euros imposed on participants in a car glass cartel in 2008.

The Commission's sanctions followed a total fine of 128.74 million euros levied last year against four producers of the glass used in cathode-ray tubes.

And Chunghwa Picture Tubes, Samsung Electronics, LG Display and three other LCD companies were penalized a total 648 million euros two years ago for taking part in a cartel.

($1 = 0.7642 euros)

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; editing by Rex Merrifield)

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Jets going with Mark Sanchez as starting QB

NEW YORK (AP) — Rex Ryan is sticking with Mark Sanchez as the New York Jets' starting quarterback.

The team has announced Wednesday morning that Sanchez, benched last Sunday against Arizona, will get the start over Greg McElroy and Tim Tebow when the Jets play the Jaguars at Jacksonville.

Sanchez was pulled late in the third quarter, and McElroy came in and led the Jets to the only touchdown of the game on his first NFL drive and helped New York to a 7-6 victory. Sanchez was 10 of 21 for 97 yards and three interceptions, while McElroy was 5 of 7 for 29 yards.

Ryan, who will address reporters later Wednesday, said Monday that he needed "a little more time" to consult with his staff before making the decision for this week.

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Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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Longer tamoxifen use cuts breast cancer deaths

Breast cancer patients taking the drug tamoxifen can cut their chances of having the disease come back or kill them if they stay on the pills for 10 years instead of five years as doctors recommend now, a major study finds.

The results could change treatment, especially for younger women. The findings are a surprise because earlier research suggested that taking the hormone-blocking drug for longer than five years didn't help and might even be harmful.

In the new study, researchers found that women who took tamoxifen for 10 years lowered their risk of a recurrence by 25 percent and of dying of breast cancer by 29 percent compared to those who took the pills for just five years.

In absolute terms, continuing on tamoxifen kept three additional women out of every 100 from dying of breast cancer within five to 14 years from when their disease was diagnosed. When added to the benefit from the first five years of use, a decade of tamoxifen can cut breast cancer mortality in half during the second decade after diagnosis, researchers estimate.

Some women balk at taking a preventive drug for so long, but for those at high risk of a recurrence, "this will be a convincer that they should continue," said Dr. Peter Ravdin, director of the breast cancer program at the UT Health Science Center in San Antonio.

He reviewed results of the study, which was being presented Wednesday at a breast cancer conference in San Antonio and published by the British medical journal Lancet.

About 50,000 of the roughly 230,000 new cases of breast cancer in the United States each year occur in women before menopause. Most breast cancers are fueled by estrogen, and hormone blockers are known to cut the risk of recurrence in such cases.

Tamoxifen long was the top choice, but newer drugs called aromatase inhibitors — sold as Arimidex, Femara, Aromasin and in generic form — do the job with less risk of causing uterine cancer and other problems.

But the newer drugs don't work well before menopause. Even some women past menopause choose tamoxifen over the newer drugs, which cost more and have different side effects such as joint pain, bone loss and sexual problems.

The new study aimed to see whether over a very long time, longer treatment with tamoxifen could help.

Dr. Christina Davies of the University of Oxford in England and other researchers assigned 6,846 women who already had taken tamoxifen for five years to either stay on it or take dummy pills for another five years.

Researchers saw little difference in the groups five to nine years after diagnosis. But beyond that time, 15 percent of women who had stopped taking tamoxifen after five years had died of breast cancer versus 12 percent of those who took it for 10 years. Cancer had returned in 25 percent of women on the shorter treatment versus 21 percent of those treated longer.

Tamoxifen had some troubling side effects: Longer use nearly doubled the risk of endometrial cancer. But it rarely proved fatal, and there was no increased risk among premenopausal women in the study — the very group tamoxifen helps most.

"Overall the benefits of extended tamoxifen seemed to outweigh the risks substantially," Dr. Trevor Powles of the Cancer Centre London wrote in an editorial published with the study.

The study was sponsored by cancer research organizations in Britain and Europe, the United States Army, and AstraZeneca PLC, which makes Nolvadex, a brand of tamoxifen, which also is sold as a generic for 10 to 50 cents a day. Brand-name versions of the newer hormone blockers, aromatase inhibitors, are $300 or more per month, but generics are available for much less.

The results pose a quandary for breast cancer patients past menopause and those who become menopausal because of their treatment — the vast majority of cases. Previous studies found that starting on one of the newer hormone blockers led to fewer relapses than initial treatment with tamoxifen did.

Another study found that switching to one of the new drugs after five years of tamoxifen cut the risk of breast cancer recurrence nearly in half — more than what was seen in the new study of 10 years of tamoxifen.

"For postmenopausal women, the data still remain much stronger at this point for a switch to an aromatase inhibitor," said that study's leader, Dr. Paul Goss of Massachusetts General Hospital. He has been a paid speaker for a company that makes one of those drugs.

Women in his study have not been followed long enough to see whether switching cuts deaths from breast cancer, as 10 years of tamoxifen did. Results are expected in about a year.

The cancer conference is sponsored by the American Association for Cancer Research, Baylor College of Medicine and the UT Health Science Center.

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Capitalism and socialism wed as words of the year

NEW YORK (AP) — Thanks to the election, socialism and capitalism are forever wed as Merriam-Webster's most looked-up words of 2012.

Traffic for the unlikely pair on the company's website about doubled this year from the year before as the health care debate heated up and discussion intensified over "American capitalism" versus "European socialism," said the editor at large, Peter Sokolowski.

The choice revealed Wednesday was "kind of a no-brainer," he said. The side-by-side interest among political candidates and around kitchen tables prompted the dictionary folk to settle on two words of the year rather than one for the first time since the accolade began in 2003.

"They're words that sort of encapsulate the zeitgeist. They're words that are in the national conversation," said Sokolowski from company headquarters in Springfield, Mass. "The thing about an election year is it generates a huge amount of very specific interest."

Democracy, globalization, marriage and bigot — all touched by politics — made the Top 10, in no particular order. The latter two were driven in part by the fight for same-sex marriage acceptance.

Last year's word of the year was austerity. Before that, it was pragmatic. Other words in the leading dictionary maker's Top 10 for 2012 were also politically motivated.

Harken back to Oct. 11, when Vice President Joe Biden tangled with Mitt Romney running mate Paul Ryan in a televised debate focused on foreign policy — terror attacks, defense spending and war, to be specific.

"With all due respect, that's a bunch of MALARKEY," declared Biden during a particularly tough row with Ryan. The mention sent look-ups of malarkey soaring on Merriam-webster.com, Sokolowski said, adding: "Clearly a one-week wonder, but what a week!"

Actually, it was more like what a day. Look-ups of malarkey represented the largest spike of a single word on the website by percentage, at 3,000 percent, in a single 24-hour period this year. The company won't release the number of page views per word but said the site gets about 1.2 billion overall each year.

Malarkey, with the alternative spelling of "y'' at the end, is of unknown origin, but Merriam-Webster surmises it's more Irish-American than Irish, tracing it to newspaper references as far back as 1929.

Beyond "nonsense," malarkey can mean "insincere or pretentious talk or writing designed to impress one and usually to distract attention from ulterior motives or actual conditions," noted Sokolowski.

"That's exactly what Joe Biden was saying. Very precise," especially in conversation with another Irish-American, Sokolowski said. "He chose a word that resonated with the public, I think in part because it really resonated with him. It made perfect sense for this man to use this word in this moment."

An interesting election-related phenom, to be sure, but malarkey is no dead Big Bird or "binders full of women" — two Romneyisms from the defeated candidate's televised matchups with Obama that evoked another of Merriam-Webster's Top 10 — meme.

While malarkey's history is shaded, meme's roots are easily traced to evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, a Brit who coined the term for a unit of cultural inheritance, not unlike genes and DNA. The retired professor at the University of Oxford made up the word in 1976 for "The Selfish Gene," a book he published light years before the Internet and social media's capacity to take memes viral.

Sokolowski said traffic for meme more than doubled this year over 2011, with dramatic spikes pegged to political-related subjects that included Romney's Big Bird and binders remarks, social media shares of images pegged to Hillary Clinton texting and Obama's "horses and bayonets" debate rebuke of Romney in an exchange over the size of the Navy.

Dawkins, reached at home in Oxford, was tickled by the dictionary shoutout.

"I'm very pleased that it's one of the 10 words that got picked out," he said. "I'm delighted. I hope it may bring more people to understand something about evolution."

The book in which he used meme for the first time is mostly about the gene as the primary unit of natural selection, or the Darwinian idea that only the strongest survive. In the last chapter, he said, he wanted to describe some sort of cultural replicator.

And he wanted a word that sounded like "gene," so he took a twist on the Greek mimeme, which is the origin of "mime" and "mimesis," a scientific term meaning imitation.

"It's a very clever coinage," lauded the lexicographer Sokolowski.

Other words in Merriam-Webster's Top 10 for 2012:

— Touche, thanks in part to "Survivor" contestant Kat Edorsson misusing the word to mean "tough luck" rather than point well made, before she was voted off the island in May. Look-ups at Merriam-webster.com were up sevenfold this year over 2011.

— Schadenfreude, made up of the German words for "damage" and "joy," meaning taking pleasure in the misery of others, was used broadly in the media after the election. Look-ups increased 75 percent. The word in English dates to 1895.

— Professionalism, up 12 percent this year over last. Sokolowski suspects the bump might have been due to the bad economy and more job seekers, or a knowing "glimpse into what qualities people value."

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Online: http://www.merriam-webster.com/

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Follow Leanne Italie on Twitter at http://twitter.com/litalie

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South Loop residents oppose DePaul arena

The prospect of a DePaul University men's basketball arena being constructed on land just north of McCormick Place is drawing strong opposition from the Prairie District Neighborhood Alliance, a South Loop residents' organization, according to a letter released Tuesday.
 
A survey of 700 neighbors of the site, conducted by the community group, found more than 70 percent oppose construction of a Blue Demons arena there, Tina Feldstein, president of the organization, stated in the letter.
 
An arena would not fit within the residential and historic character of the area and could put two landmark structures, the Harriet F. Rees House and the American Book Co. building, at risk, the letter stated. It would also add to traffic congestion and potential rowdiness in an area already overburdened when conventions are in progress at McCormick Place or major events, including Chicago Bears games, are taking place at Soldier Field, Feldstein said in an interview.
 
"We're not against vibrant development, which hotel and retail would bring," Feldstein said. And the group would support an arena at an alternate site on the Near South Side, she said.
 
The letter was written in support of an alternate plan for the so-called "Olde Prairie" blocks, which is being put forward in bankruptcy court by developers Pam Gleichman, Karl Norberg and Gunnar Falk. Their plan calls for hotel and retail development on property directly north of the McCormick Place administrative offices and West Building on Cermak Road.
 
If they lose control of the property, it is expected to go up for auction, making it possible for the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, the state-city agency that owns McCormick Place, or other parties to make a run at it.
 
DePaul is weighing several sites, including property near McCormick Place and the United Center on the Near West Side. As well, the Allstate Arena in Rosemont is fighting to retain the team.
 
The neighborhood's opposition adds to resistance by Ald. Robert Fioretti, whose 2nd Ward includes McCormick Place.
 "That is not a place to put an arena -- far away from the school," he said. "I think there are traffic issues related, and it would be a bad deal for taxpayers in these economic times."

Fioretti noted such a project likely would require public subsidy.
 
The Olde Prairie blocks have not been officially designated as a potential site for a DePaul arena, but Fioretti said it is his understanding that they are being seriously considered.
 
Jim Reilly, chief executive officer of the exposition authority, known as McPier, has publicly acknowledged that there have been talks with DePaul. A spokeswoman on Tuesday said it would be premature to comment further at this point.

A DePaul spokesperson could not be reached for immediate comment.
 
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has said he would like DePaul to bring men's basketball back to the city. A spokesman declined comment beyond that.
 kbergen@tribune.com | Twitter @kathy_bergen

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