Jackson Park, Chicago, IL
Press Coverage

Obama’s presidential library ripped as ‘ugly waste of taxpayer resources’ by Chicagoans

Washington Times

And in a letter to the editor also published on Jan. 25, Charles A. Birnbaum, president of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, a D.C.-based nonprofit which opposes the center’s construction, argued the plans for the library “suffer from a lack of transparency,” pointing out that the University of Chicago has not made the winning bid for the Obama Presidential Center public.

“What has gotten lost in the discussion is why the University of Chicago, which won the contest to host the center, is not using any of its own land for the project,” Mr. Birnbaum wrote. “The university’s winning bid to host the center — which has never been made public — is remarkable because the university has no ‘skin in the game,’ i.e., none of the property it owns would be used for the center. Instead, the university demanded that Chicagoans give away public parkland listed in the National Register of Historic Places.”