Chicago Developer Owes CTA $1M+ in Back Rent and Late Fees

Chicago developer Scott Goodman owes the Chicago Transit Authority more than $1 million in back rent, and the agency says he’s on the hook for another $11 million in late fees tied to years of chronically slow payments, according to CTA records obtained this month.

The debt piled up throughout 2025, when Goodman’s company Farpoint Development LLC still occupied office space inside the CTA’s control center building at 120 N. Racine St. in the West Loop. The CTA owns that building, which houses the agency’s operations nerve center. The transit authority leased out excess space there under a multi-year agreement with Farpoint. That lease expired last August, and according to the CTA, no option to extend was exercised.

Whether Goodman was shown the door or simply walked out when the lease ran its course isn’t clear. CTA spokeswoman Catherine Hosinski confirmed only that “options to extend the lease were not exercised” and declined further comment, citing ongoing litigation.

At some point in 2025, Farpoint relocated to 1308 N. Elston Ave., a property with its own complicated history. Goodman once leased that building to the city of Chicago to house migrants. The move puts him in a space he already controlled, but it does nothing to resolve what he allegedly left behind at Racine.

Eleven million dollars in late fees is a figure that demands context. It reflects what the CTA says was a pattern, not a single missed payment or a brief cash-flow problem. The agency’s records indicate Goodman was routinely late over the course of the lease, and those accumulated penalties now dwarf the underlying rent balance itself. That kind of chronic delinquency to a public agency that runs on razor-thin margins and federal subsidies is not a paperwork dispute. It’s a resource problem for riders.

While the debt was building, Goodman kept his political network well-maintained. Records show he contributed $1,500 to a fund benefiting Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th) and $1,000 to a fund for Ald. Jason Ervin (28th) during 2025, the same period the CTA says he owed the agency money. This month, as the Cook County Board President’s race heats up, Goodman cut a $1,032 check to incumbent Toni Preckwinkle, who faces a tight Democratic primary challenge from Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd).

Campaign contributions are legal, and writing a check to a politician is not evidence of wrongdoing. But the optics of spreading thousands of dollars across aldermanic and countywide races while allegedly stiffing a public transit agency raises the kind of questions that Chicago watchdog reporters are paid to ask. Money in politics doesn’t have to be corrupt to be instructive.

Goodman is not an unknown figure in Chicago development circles. Farpoint has worked on large projects across the city, and his willingness to lease space to house migrants put him in the center of one of the most politically charged policy debates of recent years. That background makes the CTA debt story something more than a landlord-tenant spat. It traces the outlines of how a well-connected developer operates inside a city where access and relationships carry weight.

The CTA, for its part, is in litigation and not talking. That’s standard legal posture, but it means the public agency responsible for moving more than a million people a day is pursuing what it calls an $11 million-plus claim against a private developer with no public explanation of how the situation was allowed to escalate this far. The lease ran for years. The late payments apparently ran for years. At what point did CTA leadership decide to act, and why did it take this long?

Those questions deserve answers that aren’t locked behind a pending litigation notice. Chicagoans who depend on the Red Line, the Blue Line, and the buses running on schedule have a direct interest in whether the CTA is collecting what it’s owed from the people using its properties to run private businesses.

The records are out. The litigation is live. Goodman has not commented publicly. The CTA won’t. That silence, from both sides, is its own kind of story.