Proposed Alternate Plan for the Obama Presidential Center
Architect’s Statement on Proposed Alternate Plan for the Obama Presidential Center
Spend thirty minutes to an hour on Chicago’s storied South Side, and opinions will vary: Some will exclaim with wide eyes that the glass is half full; others will suggest ruefully that it is already half-empty. Regardless of one’s outlook, not even a perfect stranger would mistakenly claim the South Side lacks available space or potential. For this famous place, the Harlem of interior America, the Black Metropolis, beacon of the North, rich with architecture, mature green space, and history, has for too long suffered the compounding tragedies of systemic racism, depleted investment, disjointed and careless city planning, and social strife. Dereliction, decay, and emptiness are as prevalent today, if not more so, than they were at the beginning of the Urban Renewal period in the early 1940s, intensive community efforts to the contrary notwithstanding.
View of proposed site of the Obama Presidential Center
This storied land, which served as the home for such diverse talents as Lorraine Hansberry, Sun Ra, Muhammad Ali, Mies van der Rohe, Lou Rawls, the Marx Brothers, Ahmad Jamal, Kanye West, and Enrico Fermi, has historically been seen as a springboard to greatness. Regrettably, however, few of the notable figures having rocketed to international acclaim return home to reinvest in their community. Today even the South Side’s reputation as a fertile and promising land has suffered, with a staggering loss of over three-hundred thousand Black residents (40.9%) between 1980 and 2017, a disturbing trend that continues unabated. It can therefore stir no wonder that Chicagoans celebrated with giddy, somewhat exasperated relief when the South Side’s most famous family, Mr. and Mrs. Barack Obama, announced Chicago would be the home of their Obama Presidential Center.
As a key cultural institution, epicenter of rebirth, and monument to the nation’s first Black President, the Obama Presidential Center doubtless holds a singular importance to Chicagoans and to the future of the South Side. However, tragically, the current designs serve only as a perpetuation of the planning fiascos of the past, failing to position the Center and its community for long-term success.
Photo: Courtesy of the National Park Service, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site
The current plans call for seizing acres of mature parkland in one of America’s most precious public landscapes, Frederick Law Olmsted’s Jackson Park. This shocking development is clearly a continuation of an engrained Urban Renewal mentality, where public and private property are taken without sufficient care for existing residents, and bulldozed unceremoniously without concern for historic context. This, and the disinterested, destructive, disaffecting processes by which it is engendered, have a proven track record of failure as they relate to both community stabilization and institutional longevity. For, what fool cares to invest his savings in the future of a community without permanence or predictability, where political whim can wipe away a life’s memories in seconds, where public assets are discreetly handed to wealthy, private institutions for as little as ten dollars?
Aside from the beautiful setting that will be decimated, the Jackson Park location offers little to the future OPC, being neither urban, nor central, nor easily accessed, nor strategically located in Chicago’s South Side community. Further, in a vain attempt to mitigate the irrefutable damage eventuated by the parkland location, the proposed Center’s architecture subverts and indeed neuters the activities of the Obama Foundation it purports to serve: the key activities in the building are either buried below-grade, tucked away invisibly into the landscape, or entombed in foreboding cliffs of stone. What should be a celebratory, engaging, vital, and essential contributor to the South Side – a dynamo of promise, and tangible engine of rebirth for our community – instead has been subjugated and entrapped by a dismal selection of site.
Make no mistake: The Obama Presidential Center, both as a symbol and as a perpetual living entity on Chicago’s South Side, can be a gift to all Chicagoans. And there should be no doubt that the South Side of Chicago, for all its beauty, richness, and potential, can serve as the ideal site to memorialize President Barack Obama, the man who captivated a nation by reminding us how to hope and achieve our dreams. But there is no room for error. There can, and will only be, one President Obama, and the opportunity to host an institution with as much potential for positive impact as the Barack Obama Foundation happens only once in a generation.
To fully realize the potential of the Obama Presidential Center, both to meet the goals of President Obama and to bolster the community the Foundation serves, the brute hand of Urban Renewal and the planning disgraces of the past are wholly insufficient. A better site must be found, and a stronger, more sensitive vision must be crafted. Fortunately, with the proverbial glass referenced above half full, myriad sites are readily at-hand that do not require the misappropriation and destruction of public parkland.
Historic Washington Park is the other half of Olmsted’s grand South Park system and has been a touchstone for Chicago’s Black Community for over a century. On Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, aside this great space and adjacent to the University of Chicago’s burgeoning Arts Block, sits vacant land that is unparalleled as a site for the Obama Presidential Center. For the past year, Protect Our Parks and Grahm Balkany: Architect have been working jointly to conceptualize a superior alternative – one that aims to demonstrate how this location can uniquely bolster the mission of the Obama Presidential Center and properly situate it as the very epicenter of community activity on the South Side.
Historic Washington Park is the other half of Olmsted’s grand South Park system and has been a touchstone for Chicago’s Black Community for over a century.
Photo: Courtesy of the National Park Service, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site
While physically connected by the Midway Plaisance and superficially similar, with each site being less than one mile from the University of Chicago’s main quadrangle, the contrasts between the two options could not be more jarring. Where the Jackson Park location usurps precious parkland and massacres mature trees, the Washington Park location enlarges the existing green by several acres and does nothing to damage Olmsted’s legacy. Where the Jackson Park location is likely to be accessed almost exclusively by vehicular traffic, the Washington Park location is situated in one of the most transit-rich corridors of North America, and directly interfaces with the CTA Green Line – in so doing, directly tapping into the bloodstream of the city. Where the Jackson Park location carelessly, deplorably severs the historic interconnectivity of Chicago’s famous boulevard system – first envisioned by Olmsted and then enlarged by Daniel Burnham to form the “Emerald Necklace” – the Washington Park location enhances and improves this indispensable asset. And perhaps most critically, where the Jackson Park location is curiously remote and can hardly be described as a part of any neighborhood, the Washington Park location is strategically situated dead-center in the cultural mélange of opportunities and challenges that characterize the South Side. To borrow a common expression, the Washington Park location is “in the mix.” That is, precisely where the Obama Presidential Center belongs and can have the most lasting impact.
Where the Jackson Park location usurps precious parkland and massacres mature trees, the proposed Washington Park location enlarges the existing green by several acres and does nothing to damage Olmsted’s legacy. In addition, the proposed site integrates into the neighborhood and makes use of 12.65 acres that at present is mostly vacant and only occupied by a gas station, a parking lot and a former service station.
Our concept and plans demonstrate far-reaching aspirations based on the potential of the Washington Park site and what the Obama Presidential Center could become, at this location, as a physical manifestation of the lasting brilliance and historic change embodied by the Obama legacy. They represent but one of virtually limitless configurations and programs that could be achieved, and have been developed to illustrate the vast possibilities the site affords. The goal has expressly not been to strictly mimic what is currently being considered. As such, our version would also require commitment and cooperation of the city government, the South Side community, the Obama Foundation, and the Obama Presidential Center’s affiliate institution, the University of Chicago. However, an integrated planning effort – one executed with sensitivity and care, to maximize resources, precisely targeting urban needs – is what success demands at this place and time. Anything else will sorely handicap the positive impact of this singular public-private investment.
Now is the time to retire the damaging, maligned, and demonstrably failed policies of the past, and engage in a better path that sets the South Side on a track for success. All residents of Illinois should demand as much. Honoring the legacy of President Barack Obama is worth the effort. The future of our cherished South Side community is worth the effort.
Grahm Balkany, AIA
Bronzeville, February 2021
Sources:
“Fact Sheet: Black Population Loss in Chicago”, Greater Cities Institute, Chicago: University of Illinois at Chicago, 2019, accessed February 19, 2021, https://greatcities.uic.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Black-Population-Loss-in-Chicago.pdf.
U.S. Census Bureau, 1980 Decennial Census.
U.S. Census Bureau, 2013-2017 American Community Survey.
Click here to download a presentation that includes several renderings.
Washington Park: A Connected Site at the Heart of the South Side
At the symbolically rich intersection of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Garfield Boulevard, an extraordinary opportunity exists to beneficially reimagine the urban context – without sacrifice of public parkland or damage to the fragile community fabric. 12.65 contiguous acres of vacant and underutilized land exists on both sides of Garfield Boulevard at this location, the only improvements a forlorn service station and a surface parking lot. This landscape, unexceptional today, presents tantalizing potential to bookend the historic, Frederick Law Olmsted-designed Garfield Boulevard, while simultaneously forming a gateway to the splendors of his Washington Park that lie beyond.
This strategic assemblage of lots – the bulk of which are already owned by either the city or the University of Chicago – offers extraordinary connectivity to downtown Chicago, the greater South Side, and beyond, by means of an unrivaled collection of mass transit and freeway access. Immediately within the site boundaries is seated the existing Garfield station of the C.T.A. Green Line, with its landmarked boulevard overpass and historic station house, as well as a recently upgraded, fully accessible main station. This transit line would provide an Obama Presidential Center development with a direct link to the South Side Communities of Woodlawn, Englewood, and Bronzeville, as well as immediate interconnectivity with the massive McCormick Place convention center and downtown Chicago.
Also within walking distance is the C.T.A. Red Line (3/4 mile), which will soon be extended south to the Pullman National Monument, one of President Obama’s final achievements in office. Even closer is the Metra Rock Island District, where a new station is envisioned to provide connectivity to the southwest suburbs, in addition to local urban service to the South Side’s Beverly and Morgan Park communities. Last, the Dan Ryan Expressway, the major vehicular artery of the South Side, is located three-quarters of a mile to the west, facilitating vehicular access from all regions, as well as expeditious, safe deliveries.
Map with legend of the distances and proximity of transportation access to/from the proposed alternate site for the Obama Presidential Center.
A new east-west bus rapid transit (BRT) line is proposed along the Garfield Boulevard corridor, running from the C.T.A. Orange Line and Midway Airport at the west to the Metra Electric District and Chicago Lakefront on the east. Aside from tying together this complex transportation network, the bus rapid transit route would greatly increase the availability of practical, safe, efficient mass transit in the Hyde Park, Back of the Yards, and Gage Park neighborhoods. In so doing, access, exchange, and interlocution between the majority of South Side communities can be vastly improved by providing an efficient means of transfer south of downtown.
Situated at the confluence and physical interface of these diverse urban activities is the Obama Presidential Center site. This positions the Center fully as a new epicenter of activity on the South Side, striking a symbiotic relationship between the greater community, the Center, and the physical spaces they occupy. Vastly improved are the prospects that the Obama Presidential Center can fulfill its goals as a community anchor, incubator, inspiration, and locus of activity.
Also within easy walking distance of the site are the boundless recreational and leisure opportunities of Washington Park, the beauty of its historic Refectory and the Northern Plaisance’s lagoons, the DuSable Museum of African American History, the Woodlawn and Grand Crossing neighborhoods, and the University of Chicago.
Leveraging these unparalleled advantages, the Obama Square plan transforms this currently barren and desolate location into a diverse mix of public and private uses, housing much more than the Obama Presidential Center’s internal activities, with the strategic inclusions of a transportation hub, an enhanced University of Chicago Arts Block, a fully equipped Chicago Public Library, year-round community spaces, educational offerings, a full-service hotel, covered commuter parking, off-street loading, and retail. Due to the expansive, urban location, the resulting complex is free to strive for the loftiest of energy and environmental goals, targeting both Net Zero energy with 100% onsite renewables, and 100% onsite water capture and reuse, among many others. Storm water management and flooding concerns are greatly reduced, as compared to a location within Jackson Park.
Grahm Balkany, AIA
February 17, 2021
Washington Park: A Historic Site with a Bright Future
"...I was left on my own. I had bought a map, and I followed Dr. Martin Luther King Drive from its northernmost to its southernmost point, then went back up Cottage Grove, down byways and alleys, past the apartment buildings and vacant lots, convenience stores and bungalow homes. And as I drove, I remembered. I remembered the whistle of the Illinois Central, bearing the weight of the thousands who had come up from the South so many years before; the black men and women and children, dirty from the soot of the railcars, clutching their makeshift luggage, all making their way to Canaan Land… I made a chain between my life and the faces I saw, borrowing other people’s memories. In this way, I tried to take in the procession of the city, make it my own. Yet another sort of magic.”Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father, 1995.*
Important monuments to the history of the South Side surround Washington Park. Across the park proper sits the DuSable Museum of African American History, and in close proximity to the park’s northeast corner is the former home of President Obama prior to his tenure in Washington D.C. Several Chicago Public Schools also border the park, including the newly created Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts magnet.
Synergies with the University of Chicago, the Obama Presidential Center’s affiliate, are also easily forged and annealed by virtue of the location. The University’s ongoing Arts Block project is located immediately adjacent, and proper design of the OPC can leverage this adjacency for mutual benefit and increased community engagement.
Map showing some of the cultural landmarks within walking distance of the proposed alternate site for the Obama Presidential Center.
No place can claim to be a richer repository of African American history. A few nearby historic sites have been highlighted for reference, including DuSable High School, famous for its roster of musician graduates; the Rainbow / PUSH Coalition; and the Harold Washington Cultural Center, one mile directly north on King Drive. Also directly north on King Drive sits Liberty Baptist Church, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself delivered moving sermons and organized protestors to march in support of equal rights.
Washington Park proper is the traditional terminus of the Bud Billiken Parade, the largest African American parade in the United States, where a celebratory picnic and festivities are anticipated with excitement each year.
With such a complex and varied cultural milieu, it is no surprise that a young Barack Obama first discovered Chicago by driving the full length of Dr. Martin Luther King Drive, later retracing this very journey for his visiting sister as her introduction to his work in the city. An Obama Presidential Center on King Drive, adjacent to Washington Park, would truly be a homecoming for the Obama family, and an opportunity to leave a lasting legacy in this storied place.
*Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, 2nd Edition. (New York: Crown Publishers, 2004), 145-146.
Grahm Balkany, AIA
February 18, 2021
Washington Park: A Community Calling Out for Tomorrow
For all of its advantages and strategic location, the Washington Park community is not without its challenges. Decades of disinvestment, job losses, and spiraling neglect have produced a tangible cycle of decay that requires visionary, bold, sensitive action to inclusively reverse. In other words, the challenges in the community are precisely why an institution like the Obama Presidential Center is of immediate and urgent value to the surrounding area.
Washington Park and the locales that surround it are places of beautiful boulevards and irreplaceable architecture, with an enviable mix of housing including mansions, single-family row-houses, vintage flats, and modern apartments. Elsewhere, however, signs of disinvestment are unmistakable, with vacant lots strewn about like the fallen petals of a wilted bouquet. The basic infrastructure of modern American life– retail operations, restaurants, cinemas, hotels, banks, gyms – is virtually nonexistent. And despite the presence of so many historic and hard-working institutions, the community today feels disjointed, bemused, in need of a unique attractor that can aright and focus the community’s spirit.
The proposed site of the Obama Presidential Center is bordered by the neighborhoods of Washington Park, Grand Boulevard, and Woodlawn. All predominantly African American in makeup, these communities have suffered tremendous population loss over the decades.
The diagram below has been generated based on spatially accurate data for lot subdivisions and existing improvements, current as of February 2021. What can be immediately observed is the preponderance of fallow and disused land. This graphic is an accurate snapshot of a struggling place, an unfolding American tragedy, calling out direly for a change of course. With deeply engrained challenges, a reversal of fortune is urgently needed. In the western half of the 2 square-mile study depicted, fully 42.2% of designated lots are currently derelict, on a basis of square footage. Also, it can be seen in the graphic that the trends of the past leading towards devastation continue unabated. In the western half, by land area, 7.4% of buildings were demolished in the last 20 years, and another 6.6% today stand abandoned and in jeopardy. The tribulations these communities have suffered throughout the last 80 years continue today virtually unabated.
Map of neighborhood health for the area immediately surrounding the proposed alternate site of the Obama Presidential Center.
Washington Park and greater Bronzeville are two of many beautiful, historic South Side communities, calling out for a brighter future for all residents. They are neighborhoods calling out for a reversal of misfortune – misfortune largely cast upon them by deleterious external forces far beyond immediate control. These are communities calling out for a spirited, community-minded intervention – an opportunity that occurs only once in a generation, such as that before us today via the Obama Presidential Center. Waiting for another such opportunity may indeed prove to be too late.
Grahm Balkany, AIA
February 19, 2021
