Jan. 10--The unfolding saga of site selection for Barack Obama's presidential library has become more than a frustration.
This new institution should be a monument to historical moments and an addition to this city's already remarkable attractions. Look beyond the intensifying competition among Chicago, Honolulu and New York City sites and you see what's really at stake for the city where Obama fashioned his political career -- but also what's at stake for the president and his family:
One way or another, Obama is about to cement his perpetual legacy on Chicago's South Side. He has the opportunity to bring a significant development, and a locus of lasting pride, to a part of this city weakened by three decades of mighty pressure on its manufacturing and other blue-collar employment base. Much of that landscape is as underappreciated, and underemployed, as the disadvantaged Chicagoans who live there.
But instead of focusing on that wealth of opportunity, proponents of a site near the University of Chicago instead want to conscript more than 20 acres of invaluable public space in either of two parks that are among Chicago's crown jewels.
If you've wondered why U. of C. officials didn't disclose these proposals for locations in Jackson and Washington parks until Tuesday, now you know. This is no way for the U. of C. to treat its neighbors. The university clearly expected resistance to its plan and chose to duck it instead of asking the community for buy-in. Susan Sher, leader of the U. of C. bid, acknowledged as much when she told the Tribune's Melissa Harris that the school hesitated to disclose its sites because "... we were going to be getting people sort of riled up about three sites, when we now know that one wasn't even possible." That's a reference to the South Shore Cultural Center, which Mayor Rahm Emanuel reportedly has scrapped because of public sensitivity to lakefront development.
Maybe the university felt pressure to focus quietly on unique park sites that it doesn't own. That might hold deal-clinching appeal to the Obamas. Whatever the force vectors here, Tuesday's long-delayed disclosure that a South Side library could mean a carve-out of 21 acres from Jackson Park or 22 acres from Washington Park raises a question for the president: Does he want to be the former president who revived one of the many vacant and near-vacant reaches on the South Side? Or does he want to be known as the one who saw the relatively few spectacular landscapes in that part of the city -- expanses where Frederick Law Olmsted and Daniel Burnham left their marks -- and had to have a chunk for himself?
There are so many unanswered questions in this process. A library building would occupy just a few acres; why is such an expanse of parkland required? Why was the apparent offer of free land at Chicago Lakeside Development, the former U.S. Steel South Works site, spurned? Proponents of a South Side site say they want to offset any subtractions from Jackson Park or Washington Park by adding park space elsewhere. But how could you lop land from parks of this stature and holistic design and add some parcel elsewhere, and think that makes everything whole?
On our Sunday Perspective pages, Vicky and George Ranney, an Olmsted expert and a U. of C. trustee emeritus, set out some valuable principles for mitigating the impact of taking parkland for an Obama library. Let's hope that by the time of two public hearings scheduled for the coming week, the proponents will have adopted these principles -- or better yet, found a way to leave the public parks alone.
Chicago is the logical place for this institution. A South Side location makes the most sense, given Obama's personal connection. But remember, the University of Illinois at Chicago has offered its own proposal, transparent from the get-go so West Side residents -- so all Chicagoans, really -- could evaluate it.
We hope those Chicagoans are pulling for an Obama library in Chicago. But if one group can't envision any sites that don't devour big parts of the South Side's grandest parks, then let's have a spirited public review of the UIC proposal.
Barack Obama may not return to Chicago after his presidency -- that seems to be an open secret. Let's hope he leaves a legacy that purely enhances the city he has called home.
