Obama Center Will Deliver Billions For South Side Economy, Foundation Says

By Stephen Gossett in News on May 11, 2017 6:50PM

Photo: Aaron Cynic

Roughly a week after Barack Obama unveiled the uber-anticpated plans for his presidential center and library, the Obama Foundation has released its own report outlining a different, but no less eye-grabbing, batch of details. The Obama Center will have billions of dollars in economic impact for both the South Side and Cook County at large, according to an assessment published by the foundation.

From construction through the first ten years of operation, the Foundation estimates a $3.1 billion in impact for Cook County, including $2.1 billion for the South Side. Construction alone is a windfall, according to the Foundation's numbers: with a $675 million impact for Cook County businesses ($339 million on the South Side).

The foundation is claiming big job numbers as well:
- 4,945 "direct, indirect and induced" jobs created, during construction
- 2,536 jobs after the opening of the Center

For the South Side alone, the Center would generate an economic impact of $177 million each year, with 2,175 jobs, the report said.

David Simas, Chief Executive Officer of the Obama Foundation, said in a statement:

"President and Mrs. Obama chose to develop the Obama Presidential Center in the heart of Chicago’s South Side because it is the neighborhood they call home and the place they believed they could have the most impact. By bringing thousands of visitors to the South Side every year, the [Obama Presidential Center] will create new jobs and opportunities in the community, strengthen the economic climate, and revitalize historic Jackson Park. This analysis helps quantify the impact we can expect the OPC to bring to the community, the City, and the State.”

The stress on the positive impacts for the South Side is not only notable for the obvious reasons—that's where the Obamas have such deep roots, that's where the center will be, in Jackson Park—but also because some community and parks groups in the area have been pushing for a benefits agreement, a guarantee of sorts that residents from within the community feel the economic boon, rather than feared displacement. The Foundation said that visitor, employment and budget figures in its methodology in predicting the economic boon were "conservative."

Not long after the designs for the Center were revealed, Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin compared the aesthetic to that of the Star Wars reboot. That now seems even more fitting: if the Foundation's own internal numbers are correct, it'll indeed be generating blockbuster impact.