Fate of Obama Presidential Center could be determined by outcome of Tuesday hearing

[TexasTowelie]

In what could determine the fate of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, a federal judge will hear final arguments Tuesday in a lawsuit brought by environmentalists against the city that challenges whether the sprawling campus can be built in a public park.

“I’m all in favor of this investment on the South Side,” said Herbert Caplan, president of Protect Our Parks, the group that filed the lawsuit seeking to stop the center from being located in Jackson Park. “I’ve argued that the South Side would be better served if the OPC were built in another community like Woodlawn and South Shore.”

Caplan’s group argues in its lawsuit that the city doesn’t have authority to offer public parkland to a private foundation for the $500 million project. The city has asked the judge to throw the lawsuit out, arguing that while the Obama Foundation will pay to construct the buildings and improve the landscaping, the campus will be owned by the city and will remain public property.

The legal matter is reminiscent of the court battle that scuttled the $400 million museum proposed elsewhere on the lakefront by “Star Wars” creator George Lucas. In that case, a different parks advocacy group sued, but Lucas and his team didn’t wait for a judgment and decided to move the Museum of Narrative Art to Los Angeles.

Read more: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/obama-center/ct-met-obama-presidential-center-lawsuit-hearing-chicago-20190610-story.html

[mopinko]

1. le sigh.

i dont think it works to plunk it down in a part of the city that nobody that doesnt live there goes.
it can spark a whole lot of badly needed development, but not in the middle of nowhere.

tell ya what, put twice as much new parkland in south shore and woodlawn.
put some amenities in it, too. build some housing.
there are pllleeenty of ways to promote development.

it is a spark, but it also is supposed to be about obama.
seems like some people want the magic negro library.

[frazzled]

2. Done: Judge dismissed the case

The complainers will appeal, but the project can move forward. South side Chicagoans are jubilant.

In a major defeat for opponents, a federal judge ruled Tuesday that the city of Chicago was within its authority when it approved the Obama Foundation’s plan to build the Obama Presidential Center on publicly owned property in Jackson Park.

The center “surely provides a multitude of benefits to the public. It will offer a range of cultural, artistic, and recreational opportunities … as well as provide increased access to other areas of Jackson Park and the Museum of Science and Industry,” U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey said in a written ruling hours after hearing arguments on both sides in a Chicago courtroom Tuesday.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-met-obama-library-decision-20190611-story.html

PS: This is not a “sprawling campus” — It will occupy 19.3 acres of the 500-acre park, less than 5% of the total.