Block 37 owner is new, but is the curse still the same?

In 2013, Block 37 brought in ringers to at least get folks to their doorway.

     News items: "Orland Park-based Edwards Realty Co. announced Wednesday that it purchased Block 37 for $30 million, with plans to revamp the consumer experience at the Loop shopping mall."

     That is one way to approach it.
     Myself, I would have gone with something along the lines of:
     "You bought Block 37?!?!?! Bwahaha! Are you INSANE?"
     A matter of tone, of course. The news can — perhaps should — reflect the dry facts set before the general public: leases and payments, business plans and company announcements.
     But there is such a thing as karma. As juju. We could debate whether curses are real and whether certain physical places can be cursed for all time. The Bible endorses that notion, in Genesis: "Cursed is the ground for thy sake," God tells Adam, ejecting him from the Garden of Eden for, in his own way, failing to follow market imperatives.
     How bad is it?
     In the long history of urban development failure, there is really only one city block in the country that can be described as truly infamous: the block immediately east of Daley Plaza. Otherwise prime downtown property that has been known since before the city's founding as Block 37, it has also been called not only “cursed” but a "fiasco" and “a boondoggle.”
     In 1996, a book was published chronicling earlier doomed efforts to make something take hold there. Ross Miller’s “Here’s the Deal,” cataloging years of lawsuits and protests over what he called a “gold-plated hole in the ground.” 

Another strategy: decorate the walls with
photos of customers who weren't there.

     Since then, a chain of false starts, bankruptcies, failures and foreclosures. Along with, to be fair, several modest successes: the studios of a once-respected television network, CBS on the southern half of the block. A popular restaurant, The Dearborn, on its northwest corner. Some offices and apartments.
     And yet. One hopes Edwards Realty of Orland Park did their due diligence. But if not, buckle up guys, and sorry (psst: note to regular readers. Not really sorry. In fact, I kinda dig it) to be the one to have to tell you.

In 1830, Block 37's tale begins

     Like a good campfire story, the tale of Block 37 starts a long, long time ago, in 1830, and might indeed involve a Native American curse. Not because of the usual disturbed sacred burial ground,. But close. On the original map of Chicago, the ancestral land of the Council of the Three Fires, the Potawatomi, the Ojibwe and the Odawa, was platted up into 58 blocks so it could be sold off by New York real estate speculators to pay for the I & M Canal, thus permanently ripping off and disenfranchising the defrauded Indigenous peoples, who no doubt resented it. On that fateful document, the block delineated by Randolph, Washington, Dearborn and the edge of the map where State would someday run is designated with a number, and that number is 37.

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