OPINION: U of Chicago Needs To Sell The Hyde Park Shopping Center

MAYOR SID SAYS ...

The replacement for Treasure Island is unlikely to open prior to September 2019, according to my U of Chicago sources. Anyone who presumed that the replacement grocer in the Hyde Park Shopping Center would appear prior to the opening of the 61st & Cottage Grove Jewel Foods ... was wrong: the Jewel-Osco should open sometime within about three months or so, by the end of March 2019.

There are a significant number of Hyde Parkers who are sick of the shopping difficulties caused by the non-existence of a large full-service supermarket in Hyde Park. You only need to read Hyde Park's various Facebook pages to hear this.

Although there was little that could have been done about Treasure Island suddenly leaving all of its six Chicago area locations, the question remains why the University of Chicago continues to be the owner of the Hyde Park Shopping Center. The University, try as it may, is not in "the business of business", and can not possibly be as responsive to the important business-needs of its community, as would a local private-enterprise owner. Just ask the spirit of UofC's late Professor Milton Friedman!!!

The fact that the University owns HP Shopping Center happens to be a dated relic of the 1950s, and no longer matches up well with contemporary economic conditions.

If the University at some point puts up for sale the Hyde Park Shopping Center ... Hyde Park will be much better off. The University needs to start making plans today, to do that as soon as possible. This would be not be all that different from the U of C having sold about 80 of its residential apartment buildings in Hyde Park, over the past four years.

The suffocating paternalism of the University of Chicago towards the commercial sector of Hyde Park ... needs to be phased out now, and come to an end in an unambiguous way!