Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Hey Look! $600 Million!

  • Lee Hogan's carryout soul food restaurant could someday be just a brief walk from the Obama presidential library.

    It is good news, she said, that the library and museum could come to Washington Park, bringing a projected $600 million in economic development to an impoverished neighborhood that has long been overlooked.

    But in a half-century in the restaurant business on the South Side, the 70-year-old entrepreneur has learned not to pay much attention to promises. Even if revitalization comes, she isn't sure she will be a part of it.
We don't know who's ass the Tribune pulls these numbers out of. The library itself is projected to cost upwards of $500 million (paid for out of "private donations" if you believe the hype) and this pie has a lot of sticky fingers already in it. $600 million in "economic development" means the city should reap tens of millions, maybe a hundred million or more in direct financial compensation in terms of taxes, permits and revenue. Sorry for asking, but where's the cut for the pensions?

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36 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Who's going to go visit this "white elephant" (no pun intended)? Certainly not the locals that live there. Certainly not the tourists from France who have been told to stay away from the west and south sides of Chicago. Suburbanites won't go for fear of some good ol fashioned street violence possibly occurring. Should have put it in NYC....or Hawaii.....or where he was born- Kenya. (Oh no, I ditn't!)

5/12/2015 12:56:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

So, if I want to visit the Obama Presidential Library, I have to travel deep into the heart of a Ghetto? Not likely.

5/12/2015 02:32:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

They are going to take away the people's park, just to build the OPL? That's awful.

5/12/2015 02:34:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The State has already thrown in $100 million to this scam. Taxpayers will wind up paying for this monument for the worst president in history. Didn't this mess belong in Hawaii? And what tourist in their right mind is going to venture into the Southside to visit the Obama presidential LieBarry. What a waste of money.

5/12/2015 05:10:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Who the hell is going to go to this crap area of the city to visit this presidential library that houses just about nothing.

Seriously.

5/12/2015 05:55:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The "create jobs" hype is always amazing on these projects.
Sure, if you work for one of the clouted outfits that will build the library you may have a job. If you work for one of the clouted outfits in the service industry you may have a job. Don't know anybody? Well too bad.
I'm sure Walsh, Palumbo and all the rest will be setting up job fairs at 79th and Cottage any day now!

5/12/2015 06:33:00 AM  
Blogger Mr. SouthSide said...

Mr. Hogan hit it right on the head. He sounds like one of the people I am proud to help keep safe in the real part of town.

5/12/2015 06:46:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Obama Lie-barry will join the Chicago Fire, St. Valentines Day Massacre and the Eastlund Sinking as the latest Chicago Disaster.

5/12/2015 07:14:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Obama library is a travesty and slap in the face to Chicago. You notice he and his family are not planning to live here. Why is that?

5/12/2015 07:24:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

But Obama is not even going to retire here, so why the library?

5/12/2015 07:32:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

With the economy the way it is, a decent man would eschew a half-billion dollar display of ego, and simply arrange for his papers to be professionally stored by one of those archival/records companies -- maybe the one set up in the old salt mine 650 feet under Hutchinson, Kansas, where they would be safe from race riots and Martian attacks, and still be available to researchers.

http://www.undergroundvaults.com/about-us/hutchinson/

He can keep his souvenir coffee mugs, photos, and certificates on the mantelpiece at home.

5/12/2015 07:33:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...





$600 million for a space to display some bongs, a copy of Rules for Radicals, and the pimp brim?


http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1866765_1815174,00.html

5/12/2015 07:37:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

man shot waiting for CTA bus...waiting for the bus to take him to the Obama presidential library.......oh wait, a story in the future

5/12/2015 07:50:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Chicago stood a decent chance of getting the parking meter franchise back. Clinton Krislov was suing to get them back for the City. Grounds of corruption, chicanery, lousy deal, elected leaders did not look out for our best interests etc.

Rahm Emanuel took the opposite side, AGAINST Krislov and against the City's best interests and said the leasing conglomerate deserved to keep the parking meters since they fucked us out of them fair and square. Case Dismissed.

Fucking Rahm should face the firing squad just for that. With Daley right behind him.

5/12/2015 09:53:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

600 Million should cover that 550 Million dollar payment that the state has mandated that the city deposit into police and fire pensions this December.
Of course Rahm has absolutely no intention of making that payment.

5/12/2015 10:00:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh yeah for sure.
A $500 million investment in Bang Bang Cracktown will float well, as did Michael Reese Hospital, wow...what a huge dividend for the community. No word on what former pol lobbied that deal with Rahm.
Now that the rock climbing wall is opening at the $60 mil renovated Daley Maggot Park, those revenues should be pouring in soon.

5/12/2015 10:13:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

No body will go there after the first six months. It will cost $25 to get in, so it will be a $150 day for your family. One and done. Same with the dumb ass lucas shrine.

5/12/2015 10:30:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It'll be interesting to take "before" and "after" photos of the OPL once it's built. I'm sure that when it goes up, it will be a monument to BHO, pristine and glitzy. However, after 5 years or so, I see the grounds littered with Colt 45 bottles, used condoms, fast food wrappers,etc. and there will be a scattering of panhandlers roaming the surrounding area shilling for handouts from the handful of fools who wind up visiting.

5/12/2015 11:16:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

600 million and pension needs direct due infusion of 550 million there you go rahm then with the 50 million left over you could build his library where he was born in Kenya and for 50 million in our money you could build a palace!

On another note the demorats blame bush for everything but bush did not use any taxpayer money to build his library all people that liked bush built it lets see how many that like Obama chip in! Crickets!

5/12/2015 11:48:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

How much will be public funds "for infrastructure"?

I can see the taxpayer on the hook for a bundle.

Every other "liberry" went on private or donated land, why do we, as a city, have to give up parkland?

The hucksterism continues and it seems will always continue

5/12/2015 12:16:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...



When clueless libtards show up and get mugged, the word will get out quick and they'll stay away in droves.

Every other "liberry" is on a nice bucolic college campus or residential area, this is a mistake

5/12/2015 12:20:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

(OT) Taylor swift has a new catchy tune "welcome to New York, wonder if she should change her lyrics?

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2015/05/11/central-park-muggings/

Looks like out of control, could it be the elected and people don't want police service? Do you think that kid mayor in Baltimore ordered police to stand down, could have a rippling effect? How many coppers are we down in Chirac?

5/12/2015 01:03:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The new presidential library should be fabricated by the same crooked connected construction contractors that built the police headquarters, commonly known as Fort Fellatio. The quality construction that went into this publically financed building should be duplicated in the soon to be presidential Taj Mahal.

As a former community organizer, the constitutional scholar should demand that shovel ready jobs for this mecca be filled by residents from such impoverished communities such as Englewood, Roselawn, 19th Ward Beverly East, Austin, Chatham, North Lawndale and Garfield Park. After all, these residents are part of that grass-roots coalition that got you elected. Put those dozens of unaccountable, no identifiable results, federally funded “job training” program participants on display with those skills for the 21st century.

Put those felons to work giving them an alternative to crime. Periwinkle and Dart can empty the county jail and use inmates demonstrating their constructive not destructive skills as an alternative to incarceration. And inmates will be encouraged to crack open all those library books enlightening them by the made up mantra of hope and change. Give the inmates a pathway to a vision, not a one-way ticket to a prison.

The new library can be a sanctuary for panhandlers with tin cups and squeegee window washers given the federal courts have ruled this type of conduct Constitutional. Street Wise vendors can confront all visitors hustling their publications desperately pleading for those solid quarters for sustenance. Six years into this presidency and so many urban communities can be characterized as gangbanger slaughterhouses controlled by unemployed thugs and infested with drugs.

The sympathetic left leaning friends of the parks are prohibited from interfering with legal action challenging the use of Park District property. The order has been issued by Soviet mimicking Party President rahm and his 50-strong politburo. Rahm says by his orders, legal action is negated through executive order validated by the elite ruling class city council outlawing the right to petition their government by comrades of the parks through the courts. Such legal challenges are strictly prohibited. City government rulings trump that outdated Constitution given the necessity to prop up a favorite son. Who needs the 2016 Olympics when you get a palatial library with no books and a carefully constructed choreographed straight party line message and lots of made up storytelling?

5/12/2015 01:26:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I always wondered where these figures of 600 million dollars in economic development come from? It is all based on projected tax revenue. How in the world they can project one year let alone the next thirty to fifty years is beyond me.

5/12/2015 02:50:00 PM  
Anonymous Bulldog Drummond said...

So, when the library opens, will we finally be able to read the sealed Obama college papers?

You know, the ones we couldn't read before he was elected and while he was serving in this Country's highest office.

The most transparent Administration? No. Not at all. The most divisive, secretive, vindictive.......

5/12/2015 04:29:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What could be of any greatness to put in the Lie-Bary for him ?

Pictures of him kissing the ring of the Saudi King and Al Sharpon stay in the white house and a trailer outside looting the white house.

The park field house in Washington park will do the job.

Dr. Dean can run the yickets sales.

5/12/2015 05:00:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The only reason we are getting the Library is because all of the connected people purchased all the property around the location when they believed Tiny Dick was going to get the Olympics. He did not so they all were sitting on worthless land. but, this is Chicago and the connected can never take a loss. So they conned and kinived until they get the library. Presto the connected will make a fortune off of the worhless property now. It sure must be nice to be connected.

5/12/2015 05:13:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The hype and numbers comes from the same people that sell sport stadiums to cities. Promises of millions of jobs and billions of dollars, yet in the long run the tax payer gets hosed when the revenue forecasts turn out to be nonsense leaving the tax payer on the hook for bond payments but the connected got rich from the contracts and deal making in the early years.

5/12/2015 06:54:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Will she be able to remove the bullet proof glass partition from her counter? Or will they keep it for the tourists?

5/12/2015 07:13:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Obama Vomitorium is coming to Chicago,Im so happy I could Puke.

5/12/2015 11:32:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"$600 million for a space to display some bongs, a copy of Rules for Radicals, and the pimp brim?"

5/12/2015 07:37:00 AM

Yo, cuz, back off, yo. This yere Choom Gang bidness!

5/13/2015 06:31:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

There was a march on U of C campus -- not a real big march, but it was there -- to the University President's front door, requesting that the community needs a trauma facility rather than a presidential library.

I see the point -- but if the "Black Lives Matter" program is ever actually implemented, we could maybe get by without that project either.

I smelled enough blood in the old Billings ER, thanks.

5/13/2015 06:50:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Why couldn't this "library" have been put up for vote on its location...or if anyone even wants it?

5/13/2015 08:57:00 AM  
Anonymous Heartless Taxpayer said...

The State has already thrown in $100 million to this scam. Taxpayers will wind up paying for this monument for the worst president in history. Didn't this mess belong in Hawaii? And what tourist in their right mind is going to venture into the Southside to visit the Obama presidential LieBarry. What a waste of money.

5/12/2015 05:10:00 AM
--------------------------------

The State threw $100 MILLION into this??? Where did they find all that money?

Are we broke - or are we broke?

Where was the box on my State Income Tax Return that said "Check Here" if you want part of your Income Tax to pay for the Obama Library?

$100 MILLION? Was that pandering Pat Quinn's idea?


5/13/2015 09:34:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You couldn't pay me to go to that library. What a waste of money again for those people.

5/13/2015 09:36:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

That's a lot of $ to store a lot of sealed records.

5/13/2015 03:21:00 PM  

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