Boy, that didn’t take long.

In July, Mayor Daley promised to purchase and demolish Michael Reese Hospital for no more than $85 million.

He said he’d turn around and sell the property to a developer for at least $85 million, and the developer could build a 7,500-unit housing complex suitable for Olympic housing. All in all, Daley vowed, the deal wouldn’t cost taxpayers a cent.

Well, on Sunday, Fran Spielman broke the news in the Sun-Times that the cleanup of the property would cost $32 million, not $20 million, as originally estimated. So Daley will either have to spend more public money to get it ready for resale, negotiate a new deal with Medline Industries to get them to sell it for less, or find a developer willing to pay more than $85 million for the site. We haven’t even consummated the deal and it’s looking like a boondoggle.