Yes, Mr. President, gentrification is happening in Woodlawn
Unable to attend the Obama Foundation meeting at McCormick Place last Tuesday, I eagerly awaited news of the meeting during my commute home. I was genuinely surprised to hear President Obama dismissing fears of gentrification. While the President is correct — gentrification hasn’t truly taken hold in Woodlawn yet — that doesn’t mean that it won’t.
More importantly, it doesn’t mean that the gentrification process or one very close to it, isn’t happening now.
As I noted in a Twitter thread, his comment about displacement due to gentrification would be something that “Malia’s kids might have to worry about” isn’t rooted in the same reality that I see outside of my door every day.
I only have to step out on my back porch to see the Jackson Park Condo project that has been given a new lease on life by a different developer. When ground was broken initially, it was right before the real estate collapse in 2007-2008. One day, construction just stopped and the partially finished buildings sat vacant for almost ten years. Last year, construction on the buildings started again and the least expensive unit is priced at $249,000.
Around the corner on Marquette Road, brand-new single family homes are popping up. Approximately two blocks north of that site on Dorchester & 64th two single-family homes have been built since December 2016.
In 2007, however, permits were issued to build two buildings, with three units and seven units but the single-family houses have gone up instead.
Then there’s the little matter of new amenities that have popped up or are being planned for the neighborhood in the next few years — the new adult trauma center at the University of Chicago, the Squash Center and the first new grocery store built in Woodlawn in recent memory.
Aside from the new market rate condos and single family homes springing up in east Woodlawn, the neighborhood is also experiencing new residents in far greater numbers and the new arrivals, be they homeowners or renters, are being noticed.
I will concede that the President is right — I don’t think that I have to worry about hordes of north siders moving to Woodlawn in the near future, but I can confirm that students and young professionals from Hyde Park are moving to Woodlawn because of rapidly escalating rents.
How do I know? Talking to some of the new neighbors on how they came to choose Woodlawn, they consistently cite the lower cost of rents and the neighborhood’s proximity to the University of Chicago as their reason for relocating. According to the stories I’ve heard, if rents continue to climb in Hyde Park, moving a few blocks south of the traditional Midway Plaisance Hyde Park/Woodlawn border will become a financial necessity.
It doesn’t take a magician to figure out what happens next.
So to recap, in my little stretch of east Woodlawn there is a building boom, higher end (at least for our neighborhood) condos & single-family homes for sale, new transplants priced out of more expensive neighborhoods and newly built or planned amenities.
Just this week, a new construction single-family house was sold in Woodlawn for a record price of $599,000. House prices rose faster in Woodlawn last year than the Chicago area.
All of this before the Obama Presidential Center breaks ground.
I don’t think Woodlawn is going to be gentrified overnight, or anytime soon. Yet to suggest that gentrification isn’t happening in Woodlawn or won’t be exacerbated by the proximity of the OPC is incorrect. Nothing in Chicago neighborhood development or city planning happens by chance.
To gloss over or ignore the topic does a disservice to the legitimate concerns of my neighbors who are fearful that there is no room for them amidst all of this change.
