Recent stories about the Bank of America over-charging customers — once again — reminded me that the bank’s founder, A.P. Giannini, must be rolling over in his grave. Such things taint his legacy.
Amadeo Pietro Giannini was born in San Jose, California, in 1870 to Italian immigrant parents from Genoa. To put it simply: Giannini did for banking what Andrew Carnegie did for steel, John Rockefeller did for oil and Cornelius Vanderbilt did for shipping and the railroads.
Unlike many of America’s business titans, however, Giannini was a paragon of ethics and excellence. One of his most famous quotes relates this: “A man never owns a fortune; a fortune owns him.”
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True to his word, Giannini spent his entire career either giving money away (he only had $400,000 in his account after he died in 1949), subsidizing struggling immigrants, or giving loans to people and projects which we all know today, among them the Golden Gate Bridge, early Hollywood, Walt Disney, California wineries and Hewlett-Packard.
Giannini’s proudest accomplishment? Branch banking, which brought banking services to common people in their neighborhoods. That’s why stories about how Bank of America has drifted away from its original concerns for good customer service are so sad and hurtful.
Americans not only tend to forget their history. They also forget historical figures whose good names should still serve as inspirations, even in 2023.
A.P. Giannini was one of those noble figures.
Bill Dal Cerro, Italic Institute of America, Chicago
Explain the math on affordable housing at 1000M
After reading Dave Roeder’s article in the Sun-Times about 1000M, I am concerned about the affordable housing in the apartment tower.
Roeder wrote, “Living in the clouds commands sky-high rents, and that’s to be expected at 1000M. The only exception is that 23 units will be marketed as affordable under terms of a city ordinance. The developers are paying $828,000 to support off-site affordable housing and $407,000 into Chicago’s Neighborhood Opportunity Fund that supports projects outside of downtown.”
My questions:
• So only 3% of the units will be affordable? I thought 10% is a city goal.
• What does it mean “$828,000 to support off-site affordable housing?” It sounds like they’ll pay to keep people away from 1000M, or am I reading it wrong? Don’t we need to see where that money goes before they finish the building?
• Shouldn’t the $407,000 that will go into Chicago’s Neighborhood Opportunity Fund be specified now? How does the public track what happens to that money?
I’m not questioning Roeder’s story; rather, how the affordable housing is calculated into the rental equation.
Beth Najberg, Near North Side
