Obama Presidential Center greeted with excitement and wariness on Chicago's South Side
When we last checked in on plans for the Barack Obama Presidential Center, in early May, architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien had just unveiled preliminary designs for the three-building campus in Jackson Park, on the South Side of Chicago.
In architectural terms the proposal has barely inched forward since, at least in terms of what’s been shared with the public. (It is officially a “Presidential Center” and not a “Presidential Library” because Obama plans to operate it without help from the National Archives.) But a debate about the role it will play on the South Side, economically and in terms of urban planning, has been heating up in Chicago. The Obama Foundation, which is overseeing planning and fundraising efforts for the project, held a public event earlier this month at McCormick Place, the giant convention center on the Near South Side, to promote and explain its plans.
It was probably when the high school marching band arranged itself behind a large table-top model of the Williams and Tsien design and started playing fight songs at top volume that I realized that this wasn’t going to be a typical public meeting. A few minutes later the architects — flanked by Louise Bernard, the director of the center’s presidential museum, and landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh — took seats along a stage at the front of the packed auditorium. Obama himself, traveling to raise money for the project, which is expected to cost at least $500 million, was absent. In the audience around me were high school students, community activists and interested neighbors, along with a handful of reporters.
From the beginning, though a predictably boosterish tone prevailed in the presentations, there was a certain edge in the air to go with palpable excitement. A small group of protesters, unhappy that the Obama Foundation had so far refused to sign a Community Benefits Agreement guaranteeing construction jobs and other patronage to neighborhood groups, had gathered near the entrance as the crowd was making its way inside. When it came time to open the event to questions from the audience, the first one — from Jeanette Taylor, a resident of the nearby Woodlawn neighborhood — was a pointed query about the agreement, suggesting that Obama wasn’t doing enough to help the underserved South Side.