Chicago is full of vacant lots. Why build the Obama center on public parkland?

Per the editorial "What the Obama center does — and doesn’t — owe Chicago,” what the Obama Foundation owes Chicago is an answer to this question: Why must public parkland be taken for the Obama Presidential Center?

At a Feb. 27 community meeting, President Barack Obama cited “all of the abandoned buildings and vacant lots” on the South Side, and WBEZ recently issued a report about the vacant city-owned land and extensive land holdings of the University of Chicago, which submitted the winning bid to host the Obama center. Why isn’t that land being considered?

If parkland could not be used for the Obama center, would the Obama Foundation abandon the South Side — as some center supporters have warned, citing the Lucas Museum and also saying the center is the South Side's “last best chance”? President Obama told attendees at that Feb. 27 meeting that when it came to where to put the center, “that was the easy part.” After listing his many connections to the South Side he concluded: “I became president because of the South Side of Chicago so we were going to have the presidential center on the South Side of Chicago.”

Would he and the foundation really pull up stakes and go elsewhere if public parkland cannot be used for the Obama center?

— Charles A. Birnbaum, president and CEO, The Cultural Landscape Foundation