CHICAGO — A lawsuit that aimed to stop the Obama Presidential Center from being built in Chicago’s historic Jackson Park has been dismissed by a federal judge.
The crux of Protect Our Parks’ complaint is that under regulatory statutes, federal agencies should have considered relocating the proposed Obama center site entirely to avoid damage to the environment, according to the lawsuit. The city and Obama Foundation officials have said federal agencies closed the final review into the project because they determined the Obama center’s construction and nearby roadway fixes would not pose a “significant impact” on the environment — a finding the lawsuit says is “faulty.”
But U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey dismissed those claims, writing that the city “did not abdicate control or ownership of the OPC site to the Obama Foundation” and that state law confirms that presidential centers, like the OPC here, confer a public benefit because they “serve valuable public purposes, including ... furthering human knowledge and understanding, educating and inspiring the public, and expanding recreational and cultural resources and opportunities.”
Protects Our Parks couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
But with construction already underway at the site — following a ceremonial groundbreaking in September attended by the former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama — the plaintiffs appear to have few options left in their long legal battle over the center.
The same judge had already refused to grant the plaintiffs a temporary halt to work at the site.
The first legal challenge from Protect Our Parks started in 2018 when the nonprofit sued the city of Chicago to halt the project, asserting that officials did not have the authority to transfer public parkland to a private nongovernmental entity such as the Obama Foundation. A federal appeals court ruled in August 2020 that the plaintiffs did not suffer actual harm and many of their grievances were not within the court’s jurisdiction.
____
