This Chicago Tribune article from 5 years ago (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-02-13/news/ct-met-yerkes-observatory-20130213_1_yerkes-observatory-resear

This Chicago Tribune article from 5 years ago (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-02-13/news/ct-met-yerkes-observatory-20130213_1_yerkes-observatory-research-telescopes-astronomy http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-02-13/news/ct-met-ye...) gives more details and actually made me quite pessimistic about the future of the building. It says the yearly costs were (then) $400k and that the University floated plans to convert the area and building into luxury condos, only stopped by the local community. Whenever there’s so much potential for making money (on the order of tens of millions of dollars) it’s pretty much inevitable that it will happen sooner or later.