https://tclf.org/update-obama-center-review-and-lawsuit
and
Richard Epstein:
I argued last week before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of Protect Our Parks, which sued the City of Chicago in order to stop the construction of the Obama Presidential Center (OPC) in Jackson Park. The OPC is not a Presidential Library, and it serves no official public function. At this time, it is useful to put the current litigation in its larger context, given the other regulatory obstacles relating to historical preservation and environmental protection that must be overcome to allow the Obama Foundation to build the OPC in Jackson Park.
To set the stage, the social case for keeping the OPC out of Jackson Park is powerful. The entire venture envisions a constellation of four separate buildings constructed on a 19.3-acre site located on the northwest side of Jackson Park, close to the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry. The Park was designed in 1871 by the great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. Consistent with the original plan, it incorporated large bodies of water, including the east and west lagoon, with direct connections to Lake Michigan. The four buildings of the planned OPC include a 235-foot museum tower, a conference center, an athletic center, and a new branch of the Chicago public library, all serviced by a 400-car underground garage.
In order to put this center in place, it will be necessary to, first, close Cornell Drive, a major six-lane north-south road (and a key original element of the Olmsted design) that connects South Chicago and Indiana to the loop, and to, second, limit access to three other roads, including the Midway Plaisance that connects the University of Chicago campus to Lake Shore Drive, the major thoroughfare along Lake Michigan. Shutting down these roads to make way for the OPC will require expanding two other thoroughfares, Lake Shore Drive to the east and Stony Island Avenue on the west. Those two additions will both narrow Jackson Park, as well as ensnarl heavy traffic throughout the area.
It will cost around $175 million to rip out and reengineer the roads. An estimated fair market value of the land donated to the OPC on a 99-year land-use agreement—read lease—is probably worth close to $200 million. In addition, the various construction projects will require the removal of 400 old-growth trees to make way for the OPC and its various “improvements” and “enhancements” to the area, as the City likes to describe them. The cash consideration to the City is $10.
kids—he means to steal the park for a greedy moneymaking landgrab scam to benefit his rich donors and speculators and build a giant obombaland them park. insert slogans here:
"Hope" y'all like our propaganda.
"Change We Can Believe In" if we can't see straight.
"Forward" or Empire!
"Greater Together" the royal we.
"Betting on America" to destroy itself.
"We Don’t Quit" til we own you too.
"Winning the Future"and fuck y'all if you can't take a joke.
"We Can’t Wait" to take your park.
"An America/Economy Built to Last" 99 years with renewal option.
"A Fair Shot" for professional golf and the leisure class.
" Yes We Can" con the public and buy the judges.
and the son of a bitch will probably get away with it. corruption rules. but nature bats last, bastards. we "Hope" a new day's coming.
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