Posted on 02/25/2026 8:17:09 AM PST by Libloather
As former President Barack Obama’s namesake foundation prepares to roll out the welcome mat to huge crowds of tourists flocking to the South Side when the Obama Presidential Center opens its doors in a few months, it is promoting Airbnb, a company with close ties to the Obama family that has faced international protests for its impact on local rents and housing supply.
“(We’re) committed to making sure that South Side residents and entrepreneurs are ready to take full advantage of this influx of new visitors,” Valerie Jarrett, CEO of the Obama Foundation, said in a December release announcing a series of community tourism prep sessions.
But for residents and organizers who have fretted about gentrification in Woodlawn and South Shore and pressed for housing protections since Obama announced Jackson Park as the site of his museum in 2016, the Obama organization pitching more short-term rentals as a good way to deal with tourism adds to their conviction that the center will exacerbate housing shortages and raise rents.
Ald. Desmon Yancy, 5th, worries about a future in which large numbers of short-term rentals become part of the landscape near the Obama center. He said he’s already seen outside investors snap up units in buildings where condo associations have dissolved.
If landlords and investors see so-called home sharing as more lucrative than renting, “it could make the community more transient, because you’ll have folks who’ll be seeking this additional income and, probably because property taxes are so high, they need the money,” Yancy said. The most recent round of residential bills went up 49% in Woodlawn compared with the year before, and 36% in South Shore.
“We already know there’s a shortage of stock..."
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Short-term rentals? Like Japanese love hotels?
Short-term rentals
Pay toilets 50 cents a night
Ah, Chicago, my sweet home, where the wind howls like a politician dodging a straight question, and the lakefront gleams with dreams that sometimes turn into taxpayer nightmares.
It’s me, Mike Royko, or at least the ghost of me, rattling my typewriter from the great beyond. Been dead since ‘97, but if I were still pounding the pavement in 2026, I’d have plenty to say about this Obama Presidential Center rising up in Jackson Park like a concrete monolith from some sci-fi flick.
They call it a “center,” not a library, which is fitting because it’s less about dusty books and more about a shiny legacy that costs more than a ward boss’s slush fund.
Look, I covered enough mayors and presidents to know a boondoggle when I see one.
Barack Obama, the smooth-talking kid from the South Side who climbed to the White House on hope and change—good for him. But this thing? Started at 300 million bucks, now ballooning past 800 million, with delays that make the CTA look punctual.
And who’s footing the bill? Not just private donors, oh no. The city’s chipping in hundreds of millions for roads, bridges, and whatever else to pretty up the joint.
That’s our money, folks—the same dough that could fix potholes big enough to swallow a Buick or shore up schools where kids learn in trailers.
They plunked it in Jackson Park, that Olmsted gem where folks used to picnic without dodging construction cranes. Environmentalists howled about chopping trees and paving paradise, but the lawsuits got swatted away like flies at a Sox game.
Now it’s this towering “Obamalisk”—yeah, I heard that nickname—wrapped in quotes from his speeches, like it’s a fortune cookie on steroids.
Windows? Sparse, to protect the artifacts, they say. Artifacts from what, his Nobel Prize for showing up? It’s got a basketball court, gardens, even a recording studio. Swell for the tourists, but will it really lift the South Side, or just gentrify it into another yuppie playground where rents skyrocket and old-timers get pushed out?
Don’t get me wrong; Obama’s no Nixon. He didn’t bug his own office or bomb Cambodia. But presidential libraries—or “centers”—are ego trips disguised as history lessons.
Ike’s was modest; Reagan’s had Hollywood flair. This one’s got that Obama polish: inclusive, innovative, all about “community.” Yet critics call it fortress-like, a Death Star in stone. And with opening pushed to summer ‘26, amid whispers of more overruns, I wonder if it’ll be another Millennium Park fiasco—late, overbudget, but hey, the bean shines.
Chicagoans, we’ve seen it all: Daleys building empires, Blago selling seats. This center might inspire kids, sure, but let’s not kid ourselves—it’s a monument to power, paid for by the little guy.
If Obama wants to give back, how about funding real change: jobs, not jargon. Me? I’d rather sip a beer at Billy Goat Tavern and watch the pols squirm. But that’s just an old columnist’s gripe. Keep hoping, Chicago—it’s what we do best.
-AI Royko
Chicago has become such a disaster under Mayor Brandon that I really don’t think anyone has to worry about gentrification, even around Obama’s cement tower. Anyone with money is fleeing to just outside of the city limits.
My father taught ROTC to the cavalry of the U of Chicago, whose stable was located around there. Just off Cottage Grove is the Lorado Taft sculpture fountain that I loved to visit. Mother took classes at his studio and, in my time, so did I. Grandmother took art classes at the Art Institute when he taught there.
Sorry as I am for that obscenity desecrating the area around the Museum of Science and Industry, I'm only grateful it didn't do in the west end of the Midway.
Everyone has seen the outside but what will he have on the inside ?
“huge crowds of tourists flocking to the Obama flak tower.”
Oh yeah, YUGE crowds. Lol.
And afterwards, most of them will soon wonder why they wasted so much money, time, and effort.
From the ashes of the Chicago Fire. The boulevard and park system in Chicago is, or at least was, among rhe best in the world. It was supposed to be untouchable in the city laws.
In a shrinking city that has lost almost a million people in 60 years and with thousands of businesses gone, never to return in that political climate, surely there was a fallow brownspace that could have been cleaned up and revitalized for the Obama Pillbox.
It will be a Grindr hookup site.
They can have a Learing center next to the guy men’s club.
“That hideous building looks like it was built by an architect with dyslexia.”
The design makes the Bauhaus school of architecture look warm and inviting. Looks like it would not be out of place in mid 1950’s East Germany.
The good news is that after 20 years or so of Chicago winters, it will start to fall apart.
Barry’s mausoleum flop house?
And don’t forget about the poorly spaced rebar. (Don’t go in there.) That would be raciss.
Obama library, begun with lofty DEI goals, now plagued by $40M racially charged suit, ballooning costs
It’s quite close to University of Chicago, so may attract a few visitors in that regard. It will probably attract sizable crowds its first 6 months or so.
but its not the sort of place anyone would visit twice.
But I can’t see how such a massive building will be maintained with its huge structure and minimal attendance.
One good fiscal crisis in the city of Chicago, which is already effectively bankrupt, and this Obama Tower of Doom could face serious problems.
The Obama prison makes the Clinton trailer look presidential.
Let’s see... where to start here..? Well, first of all, I’m not about to visit Chicago’s south side, secondly, if Obama’s library were where I live I wouldn’t visit anyway, then there’s the connection with Valerie Jarrett. Three good reasons to avoid this one.
Maybe Republicans should build a REAL “Obama Library”, complete with exhibits of:
1. Obama’s greatest hits on terrorists (and the occasional civilians, boo hoo) by pushbutton
2. Libya “regime change” (apparently, still ongoing)
3. Obama’s great work on deportation
3. Anamatronic Obama complete with helpful quotes about race and the police, Obamacare, and other gems 24/7. If funds permit, helpful anamatronic Pelosi explaining to stupid Dem reps that they need to pass the Obamacare to find out what’s in it.
Someone is probably working on an AI video of something like this for YouTube right now.
I’ve got another 30 years.
If I can spend the rest of it NEVER going to Chicago or Atlanta, I will die a happy man.
Maybe they could have brought in some of their Leftist chums to Primal Scream at the insult to nature:
LINK: Tree Hugging Moonbats cry over loss of "Old Growth Trees"
Turn it into a prison for democrats.
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