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.
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The Obama Foundation held a ceremony Wednesday to unveil details of the president’s choice of Jackson Park instead of Washington Park. The loss of the presidential center and library is another blow to the neighborhood’s quest for a revival.
First lady Michelle Obama is from the South Side of Chicago, and she and the president lived there together for many years. The site is located along the shores of Lake Michigan close to the University of Chicago, where Obama taught for 12 years at the law school.
The decision to build the museum in Jackson Park rather than another historic park in a nearby impoverished neighborhood has left some residents anxious that the museum will deliver less of a boost to the city’s South Side.
The foundation, city leaders and University of Chicago officials will publicly discuss the plan Wednesday.
More information on the Jackson Park site can be found on the Obama Foundation’s website. The nation’s 44th president worked as a community organizer on the South Side where he launched his political career by winning a seat in the Illinois State Senate.
Adjacent plots of land outside Washington Park, totaling 11 acres, were available for the presidential center and could have housed a parking deck, offices, perhaps even the library itself.
“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.
NPR’s Cheryl Corley explained that the neighborhood surrounding Jackson Park is less isolated than the area surrounding Washington Park, the other finalist for the center’s location, and that Washington Park ultimately did not make the cut at least partially because that area is significantly “more economically depressed”. It requested that the center’s construction fit with the vision of Frederick Law Olmsted, the architect who helped design Jackson Park, and conduct a study, led by outside and independent experts, to assess potential adverse environmental impacts of the center’s construction.
Activists were concerned the library might have driven a rapid gentrification that would have raised housing costs and forced longtime residents out.
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“The Obama Presidential Center, when complete, will offer tremendous educational, cultural and economic benefits to the City and its residents, and it is important that community members be part of the process of investment and development in the South Side of Chicago”, Emanuel said.
