Neighborhood pride competes with gentrification fears for residents coping with Obama Center traffic woes in Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood
CHICAGO — When the road construction around the coming Obama Presidential Center kicked into a new phase last month, South Shore resident Jane Carson said she took the longer bus rides home in stride because she knew it was for the greater good: a grand community space dedicated to the nation’s first African American president and first lady.
“I look over it (the traffic). It’s for Barack (Obama),” Carson said proudly as she and a friend waited for the bus at State and Lake streets on a recent afternoon. “I’m on the 6 all the time and I go through the traffic and the construction and I don’t mind,” she said of the Jackson Park Express bus route that snakes through Kenwood and Hyde Park on its way to the edge of South Shore.
Another No. 6 bus rider, Sharon Monson, shared Carson’s excitement for the center that is expected to transform Woodlawn by creating an elite tourist destination in an area that struggled with decades of disinvestment, neglect and redlining.
“It’s an inconvenience to them now, but it won’t be an inconvenience to them tomorrow. When
