Obama Presidential Center Faces Court Ruling Tuesday

Jackson Park Watch and other groups, like Preservation Chicago and the Washington D.C.-based Cultural Landscape Foundation, have argued the center should be built on other vacant land in the area, not a public park.

“Regardless of the outcome, the legality of confiscating public parkland for a privately operated facility will still be at issue, and federal-level reviews will still be ongoing,” said Charles Birnbaum, president and CEO of the Cultural Landscape Foundation. “From a national perspective, if the Obama Foundation and the University of Chicago succeed in taking some 20 acres of National Register-listed Jackson Park for the [Obama Presidential Center], what’s to stop other powerful and well-connected interests from citing this precedent as justification for expropriating parkland elsewhere in Chicago and around the country?”