South Shore renter Courtney Chism speaks during an April 29, 2025 protest, calling on City Council to pass a slate of housing protections for South Shore residents before considering advancing a 26-story hotel. Maxwell Evans/Block Club Chicago
Community residents say that Chicago's City Council should pass a slate of housing protections centered on low-income renters instead of advancing plans for a hotel near the Obama Center site.
Originally published in Block Club Chicago .
WOODLAWN — With a 26-story hotel planned blocks from the Obama Presidential Center site, housing activists are calling on city leaders to prioritize a long-delayed slate of housing protections for residents near the center before advancing any hotel plans.
More than 50 members of the Obama CBA Coalition rallied Tuesday on the vacant lot at 6402-6420 S. Stony Island Ave. in Woodlawn, where developer Aquinnah Investment Trust is looking to build a 250-room hotel . CBA stands for community benefits agreement.
The rezoning application for the hotel, which was submitted last month, comes as the South Shore Housing Preservation ordinance proposal remains stalled in the City Council’s housing committee 18 months after its introduction.
Activists aren’t opposed to the hotel “in abstract,” but organizer Dixon Romeo said that it would be unacceptable for City Council to quickly advance a “luxury hotel” while renters and other South Siders await action on the housing ordinance.
“There cannot be luxury hotels in our neighborhood until we have protections for all of these people here who make our neighborhood great,” Romeo said.
The hotel rezoning proposal needs approval from the Chicago Plan Commission before it would come to City Council’s zoning committee for a vote, Ald. Desmon Yancy (5th) told Block Club earlier this month.
The proposal was listed on the agenda for this month’s committee hearing, but was deferred pending a decision from the Plan Commission. Activists on Tuesday called for more transparency around the proposal as it navigates the city’s approval process.
“We’re paying attention and watching these things,” Romeo said. “We’re going to continue to watch, and continue to push and to advocate, to make sure that the CBA happens and we get protections for our folks.”
Aquinnah Investment Trust’s “sole beneficiary” is Allison Davis, whose former firm hired President Barack Obama as a junior lawyer in 1993. The developer plans to build the hotel with shops and offices, 118 car parking spaces and 12 bicycle parking spaces at the site, zoning documents show.
Aquinnah owns three parcels at the proposed development site, while the other two are city owned. The city intends to sell its properties to the developer “at fair market value,” Planning Commissioner Ciere Boatright wrote in a letter to Plan Commission officials in January .
A rendering of the proposed hotel at 6402-6420 S. Stony Island Ave. in Woodlawn (right), as shown near the Island Terrace Apartments (middle) and commercial building. Credit: Committee on Zoning, Landmarks and Building Standards
The rally and push for the South Shore ordinance comes amid years of rising housing costs and complaints of poor living conditions in homes near the Obama Center site.
Just recently, tenants in South Shore buildings formerly managed by CKO Real Estate have accused the company of abandoning its properties after mismanaging them for months .
Yancy denounced investors buying up property near the Obama Center site as “predators” targeting a vulnerable community during a town hall this month . The event was co-hosted by Southside Together, a CBA Coalition member and an organizer of Tuesday’s protest.
Two South Shore residents spoke out against their poor living conditions and conflicts with their landlords during Tuesday’s rally, joined by another man who said he was priced out of his Woodlawn apartment.
The hotel should be considered a “pipe dream” until housing costs in the community are “easily accessible to the Black and Brown people who have been living here for ages,” South Shore renter Courtney Chism said.
“I’m invoking you in the media; I’m invoking City Council; I am invoking the mayor — we are tired, and we will not be dealing with this anymore,” Chism said.
Some of the South Shore housing ordinance’s other provisions include:
Reserving 166 city owned vacant lots in South Shore for affordable rental housing development. Three-quarters of the proposed developments would be affordable for very low-income renters, meaning households earning 30 percent or less of the area median income , or $33,630 for a four-person household.
Modifying some aspects of the 2021 affordable requirements ordinance for South Shore, such as preventing developers from paying to bypass affordable housing requirements and reserving more units for very low-income renters.
Banning move-in fees and place caps on rental application fees and security deposits.
Creating an Office of the Tenant Advocate to represent tenants in court or in administrative cases, educating renters about their rights and providing emergency housing and relocation assistance, among other roles.
Investing millions of dollars in programs to redevelop vacant homes and apartment buildings into affordable housing, giving grants to homeowners for repairs and providing down payment assistance.
Setting aside most of a city-owned vacant lot at 63rd Street and Blackstone Avenue for affordable housing.
To read the proposed ordinance in full, click here. A one-page brief is here .
Voters in four South Shore precincts overwhelmingly supported protections like those outlined in the ordinance in a non-binding ballot question in November. Similar questions about housing protections were on some South Side voters’ ballots in 2019 and in 2023 , garnering support from nearly 90 percent of voters in each election.
Mayor Brandon Johnson vowed at last year’s CBA Coalition summit to support neighbors in their fight for housing protections, but he has said little about how he’d specifically help pass the South Shore ordinance.
Activists have again invited the mayor to attend this year’s summit on June 21, “the campaign’s next big step to ensure passing the CBA is a legislative priority,” organizer Christian Ephriam said.
Maxwell Evans Twitter @afrodip
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