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| U.S. Rep Bobby Rush, D-Ill., looks on as Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel speaks during a news conference announcing the future of the Barack Obama Presidential Center, Tuesday, May 12, 2015, in Chicago. |
CHICAGO (AP)
-- President Barack Obama will establish his presidential library on the
South Side of Chicago, a part of the city where his political career
began and where some of the issues that he plans to devote himself to
when he leaves the White House are playing out on the streets.
The
Barack Obama Foundation made official Tuesday what had been widely
expected, that the library will be erected on a site proposed by the
University of Chicago. The location was selected over bids made by
Columbia University in New York, the University of Hawaii and the
University of Illinois at Chicago.
"With a
library and a foundation on the South Side of Chicago, not only will we
be able to encourage and effect change locally, but what we can also do
is to attract the world to Chicago," Obama said in a video accompanying
the release. "All the strands of my life came together and I really
became a man when I moved to Chicago."
The
library, to be located in one of two public parks near campus, is
expected to be a boon to nearby communities that struggle with gang
violence, drugs, and unemployment. The University of Chicago has said
the library and its 800,000 expected visitors a year will translate into
dozens of new businesses, thousands of jobs and tens of millions of
dollars in revenue.
While the choice was not a
surprise - people with direct knowledge of the decision told The
Associated Press and other media nearly two weeks ago that it was the
winner - sewing up the deal was less smooth than expected. Questions
lingered for months about whether the library could legally be built on
park land as the university proposed, because the university had not
secured the land.
Those questions triggered a
flurry of activity, with the City Council approving an ordinance to
transfer the land and state lawmakers passing a bill reinforcing the
city's right to use the park land for the library as well as "Star Wars"
creator George Lucas' proposed lakefront museum.
But
the bid was still considered a front-runner, in large part because the
president once taught constitutional law at the university, the first
lady once worked as an administrator at the University of Chicago
Medical Center and they still have a family home nearby.
In
the video, Obama cited Chicago as the place he was able to apply his
"early idealism to try to work in communities in public service" as well
as being where he met his wife and their children were born.
Added
first lady Michelle Obama: "Every value, every memory, every important
relationship to me exists in Chicago. I consider myself a South Sider."
As
a place to tell the president's life story, Mayor Rahm Emanuel noted
that the chapter about the president's days as a community organizer
happened just outside what will be the doors of the library.
"This
is where President Obama's journey began in public life," Emanuel said
Tuesday. "He walked these streets, knocked on these doors."
That
connection remains a strong one. After the videotaped beating death of
a 16-year-old honor student in 2009, for example, Obama dispatched his
attorney general and education secretary to discuss teen violence. Four
years later, after honor student Hadiya Pendleton was shot to death in a
park about a mile from the Obama home, Michelle Obama returned to
Chicago to declare in a deeply personal speech that "Hadiya Pendleton is
me and I was her."
Much was said Tuesday
about the powerful effects the library will have for a part of the city,
both as an inspiration for local children and as an economic boost to
an area that "suffers the effects of systematic neglect and
disinvestment," as Carol Adams, former president of the DuSable Museum
of African American History, said.
The South
Side is also widely viewed as an opportune spot for Obama to base his
post-presidential plans to create and broaden educational and other
opportunities for boys and young men of color.
"On
the South Side he's going to be right in the middle of the lives of
young black men, not in some remote place but right down there where
this is a big issue," said Willard Boyd, a former president of Chicago's
Field Museum and past chairman of the(Harry S.) Truman Library
Institute in Independence, Missouri.
One
remaining question is which of two proposed sites near the campus,
Washington Park or Jackson Park, will be chosen. Foundation Chairman
Marty Nesbitt, a friend of Obama, said Tuesday that he expects the
selection to come within nine months and expects the library to be
finished in 2020 or 2021.
Nesbitt said the university and foundation would be independent entities but, "we will be good neighbors."
