The presidential center is expected to open in 2025 but began driving up prices in the neighborhood even before breaking ground in 2021. Woodlawn — first a community of Dutch farmers in the mid-19th century, then home to Black migrants from the South starting in the early 1900s — is just west of the presidential center’s Jackson Park site. Stroll through the rapidly gentrifying community to see stately greystones and brick houses from a bygone era coexisting with modern low-rise condominiums.
A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.
Woodlawn had 10 murders last year. Gentrification only goes so far in a neighborhood with double-digit murders every year.