A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that sought to stop a portion of Jackson Park from being transformed into the home of the $500 million Obama Presidential Center. The group that filed the suit vows to continue the fight.
in the historic South Side park in September even as Protect Our Parks continued to sue to block the center, designed to enshrine the legacy of the first Black president not far from where former first lady Michelle Obama grew up. The group contended the center would irreversibly damage the park and the surrounding environment.
The Obama Center will “confer a public benefit because they ‘serve valuable public purposes, including ... furthering human knowledge and understanding, educating and inspiring the public, and expanding recreational and cultural resources and opportunities,” Blakey wrote, citing the state law that governs museums.
“This is not the end of the road,” Caplan said Tuesday morning. “Our many available paths of legal recourse are actually beginning not ending, and with a few unexpected surprises to come for the defendants.”Representatives of the Obama Foundation and the city of Chicago’s Law Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The state budget approved in May 2018 included $174 million to cover the cost of closing the roads through Jackson Park to make way for the center. The proposed center would include a four-building campus, branch library, underground parking facility, plaza, play areas, pedestrian and bicycle paths and landscaped open space in Jackson Park. But the federal review found the Obama Presidential Center would diminish “the historic property’s overall integrity by altering historic, internal spatial divisions that were designed as a single entity” by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted to host the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.
The City Council approved the master agreement, use agreement and environmental agreement between the Obama Foundation and the city in May 2018. The agreement turns over 19.3 acres of city land to the foundation for 99 years for the nominal cost of $10.