Protect Our Parks

Preserving Green Spaces for Future Generations

The Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park is not a done deal

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It’s not too late for the city and Obama Foundation to do the right thing. They can still quite literally rethink the dubious OPC project from the ground up.

By: RICHARD EPSTEIN and MICHAEL RACHLIS

The decision to locate the Obama Presidential Center in historic Jackson Park has received strong backing from the Chicago establishment. No surprise. Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the City Council expressly, and unconstitutionally, delegated their authority over public lands to the Obama Foundation and the former president. Along with associated structures, they plan to build a 235-foot-high white obelisk that would arguably resemble a stake through the landscaped heart of a Frederick Law Olmsted masterpiece. And disregarding her applicable fiduciary duties, Mayor Lori Lightfoot appears poised to acquiesce.

But the project is not a fait accompli. To build the discordant OPC upon boggy ground near the lakefront requires at least several dubious steps: a 99-year lease disguised as a “use” agreement with the OPC for nearly 20 acres of prime parkland worth perhaps $10 million per acre; shutting down four major roads and widening several others at a cost easily in excess of $175 million; cutting down at least 350 old-growth trees, and snarling traffic along the Chicago lakefront for years to come. The city, as its current deficit approaches $1 billion, stunningly ignores the fact that such budget-busting costs could be avoided at other South Side sites more suitable for the OPC.

At the recent Obama Foundation Summit, Michelle Obama stated, “Barack’s presidential library could have been (built) anywhere in the world,” but that she and her husband could not find a “better place to put it than in our own backyard.” And why? To serve, said the former president and first lady, as a potential catalyst and economic engine for creating trade union jobs and fueling growth on the South Side with an estimated 700,000 annual OPC visitors who will patronize neighborhood businesses.

Unfortunately, the foundation’s sunny pronouncements comprise multiple inaccuracies.

The OPC is not a “presidential library.” That designation was quietly abandoned in 2017 because the gigantic structure could not satisfy federal requirements. In fact, the glitzy OPC serves no official government function at all. Instead, it is to house foundation offices on two floors, with exhibit space and some public spaces. Superfluous add-ons to the project are an unneeded branch of the Chicago Public Library and an athletic facility just around the corner from the recently remodeled YMCA and an existing track and field.

Nor is the OPC likely to succeed as a magical economic engine that drives South Side growth. By way of comparison, Jackson Park’s splendid Museum of Science & Industry annually hosts more than 1.5 million visitors in its roughly 400,000 square feet of exhibition space. But sitting on the edge of Hyde Park, it generates little if any business for local restaurants and shops. Realistically, the smaller OPC will do no better.

Besides, there are better places to fuel growth in the Obamas’ backyard. Washington Park, to the west of Hyde Park, is located near public transportation and expressways, and much vacant land nearby offers more potential for the kind of development we all wish to foster. A Washington Park site also could come without the huge social, aesthetic and financial burdens imposed on the city by the Jackson Park plan.

And just as the Obama Foundation and the city refuse to discuss these burdens, they similarly ignore serious administrative and legal hurdles the Jackson Park plan must yet clear before OPC construction could begin. For example, in July, the National Park Service and Federal Highway Administration issued an exhaustive preliminary assessment of effects (AOE), which examined whether the OPC plan is consistent with federal laws governing historical preservation.

The AOE explained in great detail the “adverse effect” the proposed OPC would have on both Jackson Park and the adjacent Midway Plaisance. It concluded these “changes alter . . . the design of the cultural landscape in ways that diminish the overall integrity of spatial organization in the property as a whole.” This potent criticism has not gone unnoticed, but it remains unaddressed by the city.

Also waiting in the wings is another review under the National Environmental Policy Act. In all likelihood, it will require a substantial reconfiguration of the OPC given its massive and immediate environmental dislocation, as rising water levels in the lake and nearby lagoon would threaten OPC structures.

Meanwhile, in the currently pending lawsuit brought by Protect Our Parks, a U.S. District Court judge’s refusal to reopen the case in light of the aforementioned AOE, which was issued just a month after he granted summary judgment for the city, was appealed in late November. Among other things, Protect Our Parks’ appeal argues that the judge’s earlier decision guts the venerable “public trust” doctrine by only requiring the city, without any independent and meaningful scrutiny of the project’s net public benefit or harm, to express “a sufficient legislative intent” to designate Jackson Park as the OPC site. Such a lack of scrutiny allows the entire OPC transaction to be riddled with insider favoritism and conflicts of interest.

None of these issues were aired during the foundation’s recent summit. Instead, the proposed Jackson Park site for the OPC was propagandistically hyped as an already done deal. But as hip-hop’s renowned Public Enemy counseled, “Don’t believe the hype.” Chicagoans should know that critical public trust doctrine issues are now before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. A federal review of historical preservation is ongoing. A looming environmental review will take a hard look at the rising water levels, traffic issues and the clear-cutting of hundreds of mature trees in the park.

Of course, it is not too late for the city and Obama Foundation to do the right thing. They can still quite literally rethink the dubious OPC project from the ground up.

Richard Epstein and Michael Rachlis represent Protect Our Parks in litigation seeking to have the location for the Obama Presidential Center reconsidered.

This article was featured in Crain’s Chicago Business. Read the story here.

Perspectives on the Obama Center

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Emma Dyer, news editor at the Chicago Maroon, has reported on the Obama Presidential Center (OPC) for over two years. She discusses her experiences reporting, the history of the OPC and its various stakeholders, the political economics of the project and more.

 

This is all the result of how the OPC in Jackson Park was railroaded through by UChicago and Emanuel. If the lawsuit requires the OPC to be relocated it can then be made conditioned upon a CBA that Obama now refuses to sign because he doesn’t have.

From the Wall Street Journal – Opinion – Best of the Web – October 21, 2019

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Community Organizers Work to Save Trees Targeted by Obama

Planned weekend protest to counter development in Chicago’s historic Jackson Park.

By James Freeman

Next week former President Barack Obama’s eponymous foundation is hosting a summit meeting to promote its planned Obama Presidential Center in Chicago’s historic Jackson Park. But a hardy band of conservationists, determined to save local birds and trees from the designs of our nation’s 44th President, is planning a Friday court filing and a weekend protest.

In August this column noted a letter from the federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation reporting that the Obama plan needed more study and that the council was “concerned that not enough detail is provided to properly characterize the nature and intensity of the adverse effects to the cultural landscapes” of Jackson Park and another park nearby.

Along with bureaucratic hurdles, the Obama construction project also faces legal challenges. Herb Caplan, president of a non-profit organization called Protect Our Parks, writes in Chicago’s Hyde Park Herald that his organization will file an appellate brief this Friday in its lawsuit against the city of Chicago and its parks department. The city prevailed in district court, but Mr. Caplan notes that his organization is not simply relying on a legal strategy: 

On Saturday, Oct. 26, at 11:00 a.m., in a revival of the old Jackson Park Daniel Burnham Brigade, supporters of Protect Our Parks will conduct a reprise of the day in 1967 when numerous Hyde Park women symbolically “chained” themselves to endangered trees in Jackson Park with ribbons to save them from being cut down to make way for the expansion of Cornell Drive. The modern version of the Burnham Brigade is planning to tie new ribbons on more than 400 trees that the Obama Center has earmarked to be sacrificed to enable construction of the proposed Obama Center and its 22-story, 235-foot-high tower in the park.

Protesters will gather this Saturday at Jackson Park’s running track, located at 6100 South Stony. If it rains, they plan to gather on Sunday instead. And they aim to do more than prevent arboreal sacrifice. A recent post on the Protect our Parks website argues that the “proposed intrusive 235-foot Obama Tower and clear cut parkland in Jackson Park is a death trap for migrating birds.” 

The organization correctly notes that the “birds can’t file lawsuits,” and therefore it’s up to humans to advocate against the destruction of the historic park.

Protect Our Parks to Hold Peaceful Protest on October 26

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On Saturday, October 26, at 11:00 a.m., (rain date on October 27) in a revival of the old Jackson Park Daniel Burnham Brigade, supporters of Protect Our Parks will conduct a reprise of the day in 1967 when, to speak for the trees, Hyde Park women symbolically “chained” themselves to endangered trees in Jackson Park with ribbons to save them from being cut down for a destructive street project.

The modern day Burnham Brigade are planning to tie new ribbons on the over 400 existing ancient trees that the Obama Center has earmarked to be sacrificed to enable construction of the proposed Obama Center and its 22-story 235-foot-high tower in the public park.

We’ll be meeting up at the Jackson Park running track, located at 6100 S. Stony Island at 11:00 a.m. Rain date is Sunday, October 27 at 11:00 a.m.

All who have experienced the joys of Jackson Park, and all who love and delight in preserving and protecting public parks, know that saving the world from senseless progressive environmental degradation starts right here at home. Saving 400 trees in Jackson Park provides the opportunity for true environmentalists to personally, albeit symbolically, act to make a difference and be heard. As Joyce Kilmer wrote in his famous poem Trees: “Only God can make a tree”.

The pressing need to address environmental challenges is never ending, and continue to locally arise. Today the controversial proposal to build an Obama Center in historic Jackson Park has become a major issue. It triggered the filing of a lawsuit to compel its relocation to a non-park site.

The lawsuit is now on appeal in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and is working its way to an ultimate Supreme Court decision based upon Defendants’ alleged violation of the public trust. Plaintiff  Protect Our Parks is filing its Appellate brief on October 25 and it is anticipated that the responsive briefs to be filed by all parties and the setting of a date for oral argument will carry the case into early 2020. Defendants Chicago Park District and the City of Chicago are precluded from taking any further action in the park until the lawsuit is finally decided.

The birds can’t file lawsuits, so it’s up to US!

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3 billion fewer birds than we had in 1970: Birds are disappearing at alarming rates in Illinois and across North America, new science reveals – Chicago Tribune

Safe, natural environments to rest and nest and TREES are essential for bird habitats! The proposed intrusive 235-foot Obama Tower and clear cut parkland in Jackson Park is a death trap for migrating birds.

ALL life depends on birds, the entire ecosystem of our planet is a web of life. Help us save these crucial and precious creatures, donate  to our fight for Jackson Park and ALL parks today

You’ll want to see this…our letter in response for feedback on the Section 106 Review…

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August 28, 2019
 
Abby Monroe, Public Participation Officer
 
Department of Planning and Development
 
City of Chicago
 
Via email:  [email protected]  
 
Re: Section 106 Review – Assessment of Effects to Historic Properties relating to Jackson Park
 
Dear Ms. Monroe: 
 
Protect Our Parks (POP) is an Illinois nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization composed entirely of independent minded people dedicated to keeping close watch on the conduct on the Chicago Park District and pursuing legal action to keep Chicago public parks “open, clear, and free” as they were placed in trust to be. Although not a Consulting Party we are an interested party to the Section 106 review of the proposed taking of dedicated public park land in historic Jackson Park and the Midway Plaisance to be used for construction of a 99 year private interest Obama Center (OPC). 
 
  Others who are Consulting Parties, with whom we totally agree, like the Cultural Landscape Foundation, Preservation Chicago, and Jackson Park Watch, have submitted objective highly critical review comments in impressive detail. We write to call public attention back to the primacy of the fundamental public interest values that we believe are in danger of being lost in the nitpicking bureaucratic maze of responding to the “crafty” draft report of the Assessment of Effects to Historic Properties that was issued on July 29.
 
  First, which should give pause to everyone, there is a self-conscious admission of irregularity, because of the way the Park District and City has had the need to pursue a contrived and convoluted law defying land flipping process to even bring the prospect of the proposed Obama Center in Jackson Park into existence, and it being a project which has conspicuously morphed from being a highly desirable official Presidential Library into a constantly changing 99 year work in progress.
 
  Our comment is simple. Before all the other self-serving arguments, the one significant issue is obligation to address and honor the long established lakefront protection principle and precedent that has created the world famous  Chicago lakefront public park system and has now produced the immediate challenge of protecting Jackson Park from being recklessly despoiled for no compelling reason.
 
It is not disputed by anyone , including the City, that there are superior underserved urban locations  on the south side that are not only immediately available for building an OPC but are in crying economic need of such an investment to promote neighborhood development .
 
  The vision of a brutish 235 foot high Obama tower being dumped into a vulnerable pristine park, as a personal monument, something more than twenty stories taller than any other existing structure serving as a recognized art and science museum in any lakefront public park, is frightening to contemplate and impossible to justify.
 
  The transient popularity of former president Obama , or whomever in the future may appear next on the political stage with an Ozymandias gleam in their eye, is totally irrelevant. The issue is only the integrity of historic Jackson Park not the collective egos of former Mayor Emanuel and his former boss president Obama.
 
This is how the Chicago Park District itself describes its park protection mission on the internet: “In Chicago’s backyard awaits a nature oasis. Lagoons, dunes, prairie, grasslands, savannas, woodlands and wetlands not only attract more than 250 migrating bird species but also invite adventurers to explore the beauty of native plants and flora.  Exploration and relaxation are offered from all natural areas.  Many of these featured sites offer breath-taking views, unique nature-based activities and most importantly, a break from our busy lives.”
 
Bravo, if the Park District Commissioners, who are politically appointed, were in real life practice the faithful guardians of the public parks they have sworn to be, this would be a perfect description of why Jackson Park is one of the priceless gems in the 24 mile long lakeshore public park system, and serves an irreplaceable outdoor and recreational need in south side community life.
 
Never mentioned is that Jackson Park is not just an ordinary piece of undeveloped land, it is  a unique and historically significant lakefront public park location which is held in public trust. It came into existence and earned its prominence as a result of the Columbian Exposition of 1893 and the genius of its creator Frederick Law Olmsted; and its continued existence serves an important public interest, that has been made the subject of both state and national legal protection.
 
And yet, when put to the moral test, the Chicago Park District and City have managed to treat all the existing local and state laws, and long established tradition and practice ,that makes that intent and purpose and need unambiguous as if they didn’t exist; and reduced their sworn oaths of office to faithfully perform that public park protection duty as just without meaning.
 
 The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation said in its letter to the Federal Highway Administration, dated August 22, 2019,  that it is “concerned that not enough detail is provided to properly characterize the nature and intensity of the adverse effects to the cultural landscapes of Jackson Park and Midway Plaisance “ and that “the adverse effects are even greater than has been set forth in the AOE report”.
 
  The AOE report (Section 3.3.2.1) identifies the wide scope of adverse effects, direct, indirect and cumulative, of the undertaking that would result.  It is curious that no one has cared to mention in this Review that there is a lawsuit (case No. 18-cv-3424); advancing in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals (No. 1:18-cv-03424), raising these same adverse effects issues as a matter of Public Trust doctrine; and that POP, Plaintiff-Appellant in the lawsuit, has filed a motion in that case to spread of record the existence of this Section 106 Review proceeding by supplementing the court record with the details of this parallel legal review.
 
POP is concerned that, by design, the specific actions of the Chicago Park District and City of Chicago, alleged to be illegal that triggered both the lawsuit and the Section 106 Review will become lost  and forgotten in bureaucratic nitpicking , and by malign neglect become a “done deal” instead of confirming a firewall re-enforcing the existing public trust doctrine legal safeguards.
 
Lest we forget what the Park District has said, open space, access to unspoiled nature, and dedicated public parks are indispensable to provide the needed relief and quality of life in congested industrial and expanding urban centers and Chicago has heretofore had the wisdom to take environmental advantage of that 24 miles of Lake Michigan lakefront by preventing any form of commercial exploitation. In particular, the neighborhoods of Hyde Park, Woodlawn, and south shore Chicago have had the unique opportunity to experience the benefit and use of world famous Jackson Park, which is the largest public park of its kind on the south side that directly serves the local communities, and is a public amenity that if not misappropriated for an Obama Center also enjoys the rarity of appearing on the National Register of Historic Places.

Obama Still Can’t Build That – Wall Street Journal Opinion – James Freeman

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We are receiving significant national attention…please read and share this excellent article by James Freeman…

Before making commitments to environmental “stakeholders” who have no stake in his business, perhaps JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon should have observed the resistance mounted by local stakeholders in Chicago to the planned Obama Presidential Center. On the other hand, Mr. Dimon will likely never try to build a bank branch in the middle of a public park.

In June this column figured that former President Barack Obama had finally defeated the community organizers who have been protesting his plan to erect a monument to his presidency in Chicago’s Jackson Park. (The center will not hold Mr. Obama’s official papers, therefore it will not be a presidential library administered by the National Archives and Records Administration.) That’s when a federal judge ruled that the city of Chicago had the authority to allow the center’s construction, even though the park is a historic landmark designed by Frederick Law Olmsted in the 19th century.

But now it seems that Mr. Obama may have messed with the wrong bunch of environmentally sensitive stakeholders. On Thursday a federal agency called the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation said in a letter to the Federal Highway Administration that the plan needs more study and that it’s “concerned that not enough detail is provided to properly characterize the nature and intensity of the adverse effects to the cultural landscapes” of Jackson Park and Midway Plaisance, another park nearby.

Charles Birnbaum, CEO of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, calls the letter a reminder that the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park “is not a done deal, as its proponents would have us believe.” He adds that while his organization does not oppose building the center on Chicago’s South Side, “we do not support the confiscation of nationally significant, historic public parkland for the facility.”

Could a federal bureaucracy, teaming up with community organizers, manage to thwart this Obama development plan? On Wednesday leaders from five other organizations published a letter to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Representatives from Preservation Chicago, Jackson Park Watch, Friends of the Parks, Hyde Park Historical Society and Save the Midway wrote:

Nearly every aspect of the planned Center will have an adverse effect on Jackson Park – the 235-foot tower, the landscaping, the removal of 20 acres, the removal of hundreds of trees including many old-growth trees, the road closures, as well as moving replacement park land to the Midway Plaisance.

The more one studies the critique from Obama center opponents, the more they seem to be making a rather modest and reasonable point about sensible conservation. So perhaps it’s unfair to compare them to Mr. Dimon’s new corporate “stakeholders” and their demands for drastic climate action.

In any case, conservationists aren’t the only members of the community who have organized to challenge the current Obama plan. A recent report prepared by the city acknowledging the planned center’s “adverse effect” on Jackson Park triggered this dispatch in the Chicago Maroon:

The report comes on the heels of another anti-[Obama Presidential Center] measure in City Hall: Aldermen Leslie Hairston of the 5th ward and Jeanette Taylor of the 20th ward, the wards that encompass the planned development, earlier this month filed an ordinance to compel the signing of a Community Benefits Agreement before OPC construction begins. Among other initiatives, the ordinance seeks to impose strict requirements for low-income housing in new development surrounding the OPC.

If one didn’t care about the preservation of treasured city parks—and managed to forget that Mr. Obama imposed a record amount of regulation on his fellow citizens—one could almost feel sorry for Mr. Obama as he continues to face formidable political and procedural hurdles. Imagine how different his presidency might have been if he had attempted a private development project before constructing the world’s most expensive bureaucracy.

 

To read the article online at the Wall Street Journal’s website, click here. 

Outstanding Editorial by W.J.T. Mitchell, Professor at University of Chicago

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Commentary: It’s not too late to move the Obama Presidential Center plan to an alternate site

By W.J.T. MITCHELL
CHICAGO TRIBUNE |
JUL 31, 2019 | 4:55 PM

Commentary: It’s not too late to move the Obama Presidential Center plan to an alternate site

Chicagoans were jubilant on May 12, 2015, when Barack Obama announced that his presidential library would be built on Chicago’s South Side.

All the symbolism seemed perfect. A fitting monument to Obama’s historic presidency would be located in the underserved neighborhoods of the South Side, where his political career as a community organizer had begun. After many decades of neglect, major capital investments would bring good jobs, new housing and businesses and renewed optimism to neighborhoods afflicted with crime, poverty, food deserts and depopulation.

The euphoria lasted a little more than a year. In July 2016, the Obama Foundation announced that the library would not be located in an underserved neighborhood such as the site preferred by most experts — the vacant lots adjacent to Washington Park, with their close proximity to a commercially zoned boulevard and easy access to downtown on the Green Line. It would instead be located on more than 19 acres of precious public parkland, in historic Jackson Park, a national landmark.

In the ensuing months, as the problems with this site became increasingly evident, the mood of the community changed from enthusiasm to suspicion and division, and the Obama Foundation abandoned its celebratory mission and undertook an enterprise of damage control and political maneuvering.

The community discomfort only rose when the notion that it would be a presidential library was pulled off the table, to be replaced by a vaguely defined “presidential center” with a gymnasium, a sledding hill and a display of Michelle Obama’s dresses. The mood became still darker when President Obama rejected overtures to sign a community benefits agreement that would ensure local citizens their share of the economic gains.

Uneasiness mounted further when around the same time, ambitious plans were announced to replace the current inexpensive facilities in Jackson Park and the South Shore Golf Course with a PGA championship course that would charge higher green fees and inflict further damage to precious nature preserves along the lakefront.

The Obama Foundation’s so-called “community outreach” meetings became slick marketing exercises designed to prevent public debate. Uneasiness had turned to anger, and predictable lawsuits were filed.

People of good will can differ on these issues. For some, the need for investment on the South Side and the imperative to honor Obama’s presidency outweigh the problems with the site. But is it really necessary to sacrifice a national historic landmark to achieve these goals? Or could they be better accomplished with a simple change of location that will produce greater economic benefits and less environmental damage, and fulfill Obama’s historic mission to lift up underserved neighborhoods?

The just-released federal study of the impact is clear in its judgment that the proposed center “will have an adverse effect” on the historic landscape of Jackson Park.

A park of this grandeur was not created overnight. It is the work of Frederick Law Olmsted, the most famous landscape architect in American history, designer of New York’s Central Park and many other landmarks throughout North America, from Montreal to San Francisco. It is blessed with hundreds of century-old trees that will be clear-cut under the current plan.

Sandwiched among the highly developed areas of the University of Chicago, the Museum of Science and Industry and Hyde Park Academy High School, it is not in close proximity to an underserved neighborhood zoned for commercial development. The superiority of the vacant Washington Park site was, in this respect, understood from the outset.

The good news is it is not too late. The Obamas can reconsider their plans before permanent damage is done to the park.

At this moment of irreversible decision they should think carefully about what both the immediate and long-term results for themselves and the community will be if they bring a wrecking ball to the Jackson Park site.

The gentrification of the adjacent Woodlawn neighborhood, its low-income renters already being driven out, will proceed apace. The 19 acres of Jackson Park will be transformed from a beautifully designed (if poorly maintained) public park into a muddy construction site for the next several years, filled with bulldozers and chain-link fences.

Four major arteries within and around will be blocked, including the Midway Plaisance going east and Cornell Drive, a major commuter artery. Lake Shore Drive and Stony Island Avenue will require major reconstruction, with all the predictable traffic problems, at a prohibitive outlay of taxpayer money in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The proposed “improvements” will snarl traffic for several years, and leave a long-term grid worse than the present layout.

At the end of this spectacular period of destruction, a 23-story tower will arise from the ruins amid some low-level outbuildings with green roofs to remind us of the beautiful park that was once there. Will this be an enhancement of Obama’s legacy, or a permanent stain on his memory?

W.J.T. Mitchell is a professor of English and art history at the University of Chicago where he teaches courses on landscape and politics.