A reminder that the Obama Center and the golf course redo are two separate projects that happen to be adjacent, though Barack Obama urged Tiger Woods to get involved in the golf project.
The Obama Center's latest cost, including estimates of early operation, is $830 million, up from $462 million. (Prices have a tendency to go up in Chicago.)
The latest cost of the Jackson Park-South Shore redo, which would take two courses totaling 27 holes and replace them with 18 holes, a better range, and a kid-friendly practice/learning area, is $60 million, up from the original $30 million.
The original breakdown was the private financiers needing to raise $24 million before the Chicago Park District would kick in $6 million. Then the price tag jumped to $60 million, the public needing to find $36 million, when Mike Kelly, then the boss of the CPD, told me infrastructure would have to be included in the cost. (Little of that infrastructure cost can be shared with the Obama Center, as it revolves around Lake Michigan lakeshore, an underpass to connect Jackson Park and South Shore, and other technical headaches. The Army Corps of Engineers would have to sign off on anything involving the lake.)
Kelly told me that at a news conference in January 2018.
What is the cost now, more than four years later? Leaving aside the elimination of a popular pair of courses, does the cost exceed the benefit?
Ancillary programs tied to the development could take place anyway – for instance, there has been a caddie program in the past, and there is one now. A fundraising project for the area could go into other community programs that would benefit the neighborhoods, including those immediately adjacent to the south boundary of Jackson Park and west boundary of South Shore that are among the most crime-ridden in Chicago.
Other CPD courses are being renovated – I believe Robert Black, sitting on the bones of the old Edgewater Golf Club on the north side, was the most recent to get an upgrade – and Jackson Park and South Shore certainly belong in that rotation.
That could be done for a lot less than $60 million. Do nine holes at a time and the other 18 could stay open throughout. And you wouldn't have to cut down any trees beyond those for opening up portions of the course.
FYI: Walking rates this week at Jackson Park are $29.36 weekdays and $32.11 on the weekend. For anybody, resident or not.
Tim Leahy, the significant difference between JP-SS and East Lake is the public-private difference. Tom Cousins owns/controls East Lake. The people own Jackson Park and South Shore.