by Richard A. Epstein at City Journal
Even before he left office in January 2017, President Barack Obama had laid grand plans to build a presidential library on the South Side of Chicago. As early as 2015, the Chicago City Council (and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff from 2009 to 2010) announced that “the City defers to the sound judgment of the President and his Foundation as to the ultimate location of the Presidential Library.” Obama ultimately decided to build on 19.3 choice acres in historic Jackson Park, designed in 1871 by great American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. By that time, Obama’s “library” designation had been ditched because federal law imposes strict limitations on the size of presidential libraries. Freed of thosose restrictionss, the Obama Foundation unveiled a new plan with a 235-foot tower, joined by three other buildings. The Foundation claims that its new complex, the Obama Presidential Center (OPC), will generate huge economic returns to the city. But don’t bet on it. The Jackson Park site is landlocked, and the nearby land is fully occupied. If the larger Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science and Industry didn’t transform the South Side, neither will the OPC.
Without economic growth, the planned site is destined to cause maximum disruption, expense, and degradation to Jackson Park and its immediate environs. The project will require cutting down perhaps up to 1,000 old-growth trees; Cornell Drive, a six-lane north/south artery, will become a bike path. To expand the already-overtaxed DuSable Lake Shore Drive (U.S. 41) to the east and Stony Island Avenue to the west to offset, but not neutralize, the looming traffic crunch will require major roadwork, costing $172 million in 2018 dollars. A high water table guarantees that dewatering the Center’s deep foundations will be a constant source of trouble, made worse by the OPC’s location near the West Lagoon, which exposes the site to the vagaries of Lake Michigan weather.
Before the work commenced, public estimates put the OPC’s cost at an estimated $350 million in 2018. That figure crept near $500 million by 2020 and $700 million by June 2021, shortly before the city transferred the construction site to the Obama Foundation. Since then, the foundation has not released any new cost estimates, nor has it updated its time of completion. But its 2020 Annual Report estimated that it needed close to $1 billion in new funds to finish construction and cover the costs of maintenance, operation, and improvement of the structure. With little money in the bank, the foundation saw total fundraising shrink from $171 million in 2020 to $159 million in 2021, well below the 2017 high of $232 million. The OPC could end up underwater both physically and financially, which is why the 2021 Annual Report does not mention these touchy funding issues.
Sadly, none of these dire consequences were necessary. The Obamas wanted to build the OPC on the South Side, where multiple sites exist from which the foundation could freely choose. To show how this choice might be made, a local organization, Protect Our Parks (POP), has championed a detailed site plan for one such South Side site, on a dozen acres just west of Washington Park with multiple advantages: the location has access to multiple train and bus lines and the Dan Ryan Expressway, the principal South Side interstate artery. The land is private, so little permitting would have been necessary, and mercifully few trees would have needed to fall. The eminent architect Grahm Balkany has developed a site plan that won the American Institute of Architects’ Illinois Honor Award for Master Planning. Yet the Obamas have never once during subsequent litigation examined this or any other South Side site.
Against this backdrop, POP and several individual citizens—Obama supporters all—started suing in 2018 to stop the takeover of Jackson Park. At every point, the plaintiffs supported construction of the OPC on Chicago’s South Side. Their sole objective was, and is, to block construction of the OPC in Jackson Park by having an appropriate legal review of nearby alternatives. Michael Rachlis and I became lawyers for the plaintiffs a year later, optimistic about our case. In addition, we had three major legal objections—on environmental, public trust, and financial grounds—that should have stopped the OPC construction cold. But flawed rulings have blocked all objections.
The environmental issues stem from the Obama Foundation’s need…
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