The Barack Obama Presidential Center is the planned presidential library of Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States. The center will be located in Jackson Park on the South Side of Chicago, near the campus of the University of Chicago. The university provides planning, support, engagement and programming. The center will not be part of the presidential library network operated by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) The nonprofit Obama Foundation oversees the creation of the Center and the construction of its campus.
Video Barack Obama Presidential Center
Board and staff
The Obama Foundation board includes Chairman Marty Nesbitt, a close friend from Chicago; J. Kevin Poorman, president and CEO of PSP Capital Partners; David Plouffe; Obama's half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng; venture capital financier, John Doerr; Studio Museum in Harlem Director and Chief Curator, Thelma Golden; fundraiser and former White House staffer, Juliana Smoot; investment managers John Rogers, and Michael Sacks, and former Governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick. Barack Obama has a home in Hyde Park. The foundation was formally established in January 2014.
Louise Bernard, outgoing Director of Exhibitions at NYPL, was named director of the Museum of the Obama Presidential Center in May 2017. Michael Strautmanis became the vice-president of civic engagement for the foundation in 2016.
Maps Barack Obama Presidential Center
Planning and design
The University of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Hawaii, and Columbia University submitted proposals to host the institution.
In May 2015, the Barack Obama Foundation and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that the foundation and the Barack Obama Presidential Center would be located in Chicago's South Side, and would be built in partnership with the University of Chicago. The selection of the South Side has broad local support for reasons of civic pride as well as of the economic development it would bring in the form of jobs and development, although the nonprofit group Friends of the Parks opposes the loss of parkland to build the center and had threatened a lawsuit to block development.Additionally, the Obama Library South Side Community Benefits Agreement Coalition, a coalition of 19 community and activist groups, is seeking a community benefits agreement to require that the Obama Foundation, in partnership with the City of Chicago, sets aside jobs for residents in the local communities, protect low-income housing and home owners, support and create Black businesses, and strengthen neighborhood schools.[1] Some residents have concerns about rising property taxes and rents that could displace many of the low-income Black residents. Recent rent increases for residents living directly across the street of the site location for the library has escalated concerns of displacement of residents, and drawn protests of local Aldermen who are in opposition of a community benefits agreement.The Obama Foundation has so far refused to consider a community benefits agreement. The foundation has announced plans for community hiring.
A design advisory committee assisted in the selection of the architects. Members of the committee included sculptor Don Gummer (the husband of actress Meryl Streep); Ed Schlossberg of ESI Design (husband of Caroline Kennedy, the then U.S. ambassador to Japan); Fred Eychaner, a Chicago radio station owner and Democratic financier; and Architectural Digest magazine editor Margaret Russell. Seven architectural firms were announced as finalists in December 2015 from an initial list of 140 applicants: John Ronan Architects, Adjaye Associates, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, SHoP Architects, Snøhetta, and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects.
New York-based Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and Chicago-based Interactive Design Architects were chosen in June 2016 to jointly lead the design and engineering of the center. For the exhibition design, Ralph Appelbaum Associates, which worked on the National Museum of African American History, will lead a team including Civic Projects, Normal, and several local artists. The landscape architect is Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, with Site Design Group, and Living Habitats. A group, Lakeside Alliance, which includes, Turner Construction, and a consortium of local African-American owned firms, Powers & Sons Construction, UJAMAA Construction, Brown & Momen, and Safeway Construction will build the library.
Two parks near the University of Chicago's campus, Jackson Park and Washington Park, were considered. On July 29, 2016, the foundation announced the selection of portion of Jackson Park in the Woodlawn neighborhood. Jackson Park, designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, already houses the Museum of Science and Industry and a golf course.
Preliminary plans were unveiled in May 2017, involving three buildings in geometric shapes covered in light-colored stone, roughly 200,000 to 225,000 square feet (18,600 to 20,900 m2). The museum building (which will also include educational and meeting space) will be the tallest at 180 ft (55 m). The other buildings, a library building and a forum building, will be a single story. The latter building will feature an auditorium, restaurant, and a public garden. The library will be "the first completely digital presidential library in the country, with no paper records stored on site"--papers will be stored at a separate National Archives and Records Administration facility.
The unveiled plan incorporates the Jackson Park end of Midway Plaisance from the north (which would be readapted as a circular greenspace surrounding a water basin), and the entirety of the park's hockey field and adjoining parkland to the south, where the main buildings and new park landscaping are to be sited. As part of a wider plan to reclaim parkland and improve park safety, the project also necessitates the closure of South Cornell Drive between 60th and 67th Streets, a 6-lane thoroughfare that runs along the western park lagoon and the park's golf course from Midway Plaisance to South Shore. Without improvements to other roadways that will accommodate local traffic, these closures will result in nine intersections in the area to operate over capacity causing substantial traffic delays.
Construction and fundraising
Construction of the center is expected to begin in late 2018 and be completed in 2020 or 2021. A federal review of the project began in late 2017, responding to the local criticism and attempting to assess whether the project affects Jackson Park's status on the National Register of Historic Places. This review is expected to end in the summer or fall of 2018, and will determine the start date of construction if the plan is approved. The architects said in February 2017 that construction of the center's museum and library would likely approach $300 million, and that the Center would likely need an endowment of $1.5 billion. Until the site is ready, papers and artifacts from the Obama administration are being stored and processed inside a facility in suburban Hoffman Estates, northwest of Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Obama did not do major fundraising for the Center while still in office. In 2017, Obama reportedly was set to engage in a major fundraising effort for the Center.
Some University of Chicago faculty members expressed concerns about the design, raised questions about the estimated cost of transportation improvements, and stated "there are concerns that the Obama Center as currently planned will not provide the promised development or economic benefits to the neighborhoods".
See also
- Presidential Records Act
Notes
References
External links
- Official website
- University of Chicago library announcement with videos
- National Archives and Records Administration website for the library
- Builder website for the Obama Center
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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