“With a center in Jackson Park, not only will we be able to affect local change, but we can attract the world to this historic neighborhood, whose rich cultural heritage dates back to the 1893 World’s Fair”.
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President Barack Obama has chosen Jackson Park, a lakefront park that once hosted the world’s fair on the city’s south side, for his $500 million presidential library, according to a person familiar with the matter. The statement also briefly discusses why Jackson Park edged out Washington Park, the other potential location for the presidential center that was heavily considered.
City officials developed Jackson Park, named for the seventh president of the U.S., Andrew Jackson, more than 120 years ago.
Additionally, a concern for the South Side as a whole that would be present regardless of whether Jackson Park or Washington Park had been chosen is that public works in inner cities often unintentionally drive up rents and result in gentrification – driving longtime residents of the area out.
In a statement last week, the Obama Foundation seemed to conclude that more visitors would be drawn to Jackson Park and that building the library there would have “the greatest long-term impact on the combined communities”.
“The design of the Obama Library should maximize the use of available vacant land and underground space, and be truly “park positive” by adding parkland to the surrounding community”, said Juanita Irizarry. The park was designed by noted landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.
The 542-acre park, was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the team who also designed New York’s Central Park.
“I’m just so unhappy”, said Jacky Grimshaw, vice president for policy at the Center for Neighborhood Technology, an urban development and economic advocacy organization. They are connected by a strip of green known as the Midway Plaisance. The park, which is not far from the Obama’s Chicago home, is also a stone’s throw from the DuSable Museum of African American History and the campus of the University of Chicago. And the president said, “We are proud that the center will help spur development in an urban area”.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity”, said Emanuel, who dismissed the group as “friends of the parking lot” during the battle over the Lucas museum.
The Barack Obama Foundation recently announced that the NY architects behind the nearby University of Chicago’s Logan Center for the Arts would partner with a Chicago firm in designing the center.
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Some Washington Park community leaders are quietly pleased the library will be close but not too close.
