Obama-centered Chicago tours popular

CHICAGO, May 12 (UPI) -- Tourists are flocking to President Barack Obama's Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago, with even stronger turnouts expected this summer, tourism officials said.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday tourists hunger to see places frequented by the Obamas. At least 15 Chicago tours include such sites as Obama's $1.6 million continuously police-barricaded Georgian-style house, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Robie House, and the University of Chicago and its Laboratory School, in which Obama's daughters were enrolled.

"It's PR and advertising you can't buy," Deputy Director Jan Kostner of the Illinois Bureau of Tourism said. "We're marketing it," Kostner added, referring to a city- and state-created Obama Trail.

An American Sightseeing bus tour does not, however, point out sites pertaining to controversial figures in Obama's career such as the vacant lot adjacent to Obama's home owned by Tony Rezko, a former Obama fundraiser now convicted for influence-peddling, or Trinity United Church, whose minister and the Obamas' pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose race-baiting rhetoric prompted Obama to cancel his membership during the presidential campaign.