The Obama Presidential Center passed a Chicago City Council vote 47-1 mid-Wednesday with loud cheers resounding from the legislative body afterward.
Alderman David Moore voted against the proposal due to financial concerns. He was also the only member of the 10 present to vote no at Tuesday’s zoning hearing on the $500 million private project, which started out two years ago as a library and has since morphed into a “center” equivalent to the height of a 23-story building.
[Chicago zoning board approves Obama Presidential Center 9-1]
Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff to former President Barack Obama, praised the council for its swift passage of the proposals.
Last week, the Chicago Plan Commission voted unanimously in support of the center and entered into a long-term lease of 19.3 park acres from the city to the foundation. Tuesday’s vote approved road closures and infrastructure projects, estimated to cost city taxpayers $175 million which the Obama group will not be responsible for covering.
The council vote officially ends the municipal review process and concludes a year of community meetings between the Obama Foundation and residents of the lower-income neighborhood that has expressed concerns the project will gentrify the historically black area.
The center would include “eating and drinking establishments (including liquor),” a Chicago city library, sledding hill, sports center, women’s garden, museum featuring historic items from the civil rights movement, and an augmented reality experience of Obama’s Oval Office.
The eight-story 235-foot-tall main building would be accompanied by a 300-seat auditorium in a separate building, a third facility for the public library, and a 440-car underground parking garage.
The Obama Foundation originally said it would house a presidential library on the property and vowed to have the National Archives oversee the facility due to its placement on public land. But that’s no longer the case, and some are balking at the change in plans.
Some environmentalists and historians are unhappy with the foundation’s plans to swoop in and take over a national historic site.
“The City Council’s rubber-stamping of the Obama Presidential Center was totally expected,” Charles A. Birnbaum, president of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, said in a statement. “For all the talk of transparency, the Obama Foundation has never answered one essential question: Why MUST National Register-designated public parkland be taken for the OPC when other options exist?”
Obama’s will have to be approved by the Environmental Protection Agency under the National Environmental Policy Act and Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act.
The first verification process will determine if the Obama Presidential Center would have “adverse effects” on Jackson Park. The State Historic Preservation Office will ask “official consulting parties” to provide opinions.
The last decision regarding Jackson Park took place in 2012, when federal officials decided the land should not be touched.
Additionally, the project faces a lawsuit from Protect Our Parks, Inc.
The suit claims the move indicates it’s a “bait-and-switch” by switching out the public library for a private institution. The group is looking to “bar the Park District and the City from approving the building of the Presidential Center and from conveying any interest in or control of the Jackson Park site to the [Obama] Foundation.”
The organization stated that the University of Chicago’s bid to house the building on historic park land that is protected by preservation laws would be a violation of federal and local policy. Protect Our Parks said public park land is “prohibited by law” from being handed over to a nongovernmental entity for private use, and that it would violate the park district code.
