Jackson Park, Chicago, IL
Press Coverage

Barack Obama Is Beloved in Chicago. But Activists Are Divided Over His Future Presidential Center

Time Magazine

News that the center was being dropped in Jackson Park, a historic public space designed by famed landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, was met with apprehension. Chicago’s lakefront, just a skip away from the site of the center, is under a decades-old mandate to remain “forever open, clear and free.” And Jackson Park itself was designed as a democratic space that people from all walks of life could enjoy, with winding roads and passages that offer expansive views of Lake Michigan. The center would fundamentally change the park’s layout. Charles Birnbaum, president and CEO of the D.C.-based Cultural Landscape Foundation, questioned why Chicago would want to alter one of the city’s great civic spaces. “If Columbia University had said they were taking 17 acres of Central Park for this, they’d be laughed out of New York,” he says. “So why is this any different?”