Greetings all,
Here is that IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT! JPW has incorporated and is now raising money to carry on our work to ensure community input and transparency in major decisions about Jackson Park.
We hope you are excited and pleased! And we hope you will want to contribute. Checks made out to Jackson Park Watch can be sent to Jackson Park Watch, P.O. Box 15302, Chicago IL 60615. Sorry, but we cannot accept on-line contributions at this time. Visit the new DONATE tab on our web site for additional information. (http://jacksonparkwatch.org/donate/).
Here are some excerpts from the media release we have just now sent out:
. . . Jackson Park Watch (JPW) announces that it has incorporated as an Illinois nonprofit organization and is soliciting tax-deductible contributions under a fiscal sponsorship agreement with Friends of the Parks. The funds will be used to engage new legal and other expert counsel to expand JPW’s ongoing work of gathering and sharing information about proposed changes in Jackson Park. The focus is on the Obama Presidential Center (OPC) and related projects including road closures and realignments, an above-ground parking garage, and a PGA-type golf course. JPW has been gathering and sharing information related to the OPC through its widely followed Jackson Park Watch Updates since the July 2016 announcement that the center would be located in Jackson Park.
JPW co-president Brenda Nelms explains: “In keeping with our core priorities of ensuring community input and transparent decision-making on major matters relating to historic Jackson Park, we want to provide accurate and useful information about the review processes that lie ahead for the Obama Presidential Center as it is submitted to the Chicago Plan Commission. Retaining legal and other expert counsel will enable us to understand not only how the review processes work but how interested groups and individuals can make their voices heard so as to maximize their impact.”
Adds JPW co-president Margaret Schmid: “We welcome the OPC to Chicago’s South Side and wish President Obama the best as his visionary and exciting civic engagement and community-building programs are implemented. But it is the unfortunate truth that many aspects of the OPC proposal and related proposals have generated significant community concerns that have not been addressed. We believe that it is in the best interests of the OPC itself as well as of the community that these issues are fully aired and properly addressed as the Chicago Plan Commission and other relevant reviews take place.”. . . .
As always, feel free to share this Update widely.
Brenda Nelms and Margaret Schmid
Co-founders, Jackson Park Watch
www.jacksonparkwatch.org
jacksonparkwatch@gmail.com
www.facebook.com/jacksonparkwatch