Chicago City Planners Say Obama Library Will Hurt Community, Obama Staffers ‘Pleased’ Anyway

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Former President Donald Trump gestures at an plan fo the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago during a public meeting in 2017. (Scott Olson / Getty Images)

By Joe Saunders

Published July 30, 2019 at 11:36am

During his presidency, Barack Obama was never as popular in the country as his lapdog media pretended.

During his post-presidency, Obama might not be as popular in his hometown as he thought.

The Chicago Tribune on Tuesday reported that city planners had found that building the proposed Obama Presidential Center in the city’s Jackson Park will have an “adverse effect” on the surrounding neighborhoods.

Considering the sheer size of the project, it’s tough to see how it wouldn’t have an adverse effect no matter where it went.

Planned to cover 20 acres, and sticking American taxpayers for at least $200 million, the Obama presidential center has been a monument to one man’s ego from its inception.

And unlike other presidential libraries, the Obama center will not be a repository of papers relating to Obama’s consequential two terms in office, the Tribune reported last year.

In fact, it is more suited to be a museum dedicated to a single“legacy” than any kind of center for scholarship — as previous presidential libraries were conceived.

It has also received a cool welcome from Chicago resident who don’t want to see a key part of their city, Jackson Park, destroyed for a dubious gain.

Obama staffers, however, said they were satisfied with the report.

“We arrive at this point with a continued sense of urgency but also being pleased … that we are at this stage and ready to move to the next one,” Michael Strautmanis, vice president for civic engagement for the Obama Foundation, said, according to the Tribune.

The reason for that is that the project has been so badly stalled amid community opposition that it might have looked like it was never going to be completed. So the report being released at all is actually a sign of life.

There are some, though, who would rather it just went away. In February, a judge OK’d a lawsuit by a group called “Protect Our Parks” that’s trying to force Obama to build the center somewhere else entirely.

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Poster Comment:

Let Obummer build his library near Stateville Prison in Joliet. It will not be such a long walk for him to get there.