Monthly Archives: August 2021

JACKSON PARK WATCH UPDATE, August 9, 2021

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Greetings, all, 

Rush to dig

Since mid-April, the Obama Foundation has made an increasingly urgent push to raise more money for the Obama Presidential Center and, in support of that effort, to put shovels in the ground of Jackson Park as a green-light signal to potential donors and perhaps also to members of the judiciary.  

It was on April 14 that a group of plaintiffs – Protect Our Parks and six individuals – filed a complaint in the federal district court challenging the procedures used in the federal reviews of the changes to the park that would be necessary to accommodate the Obama Presidential Center.  On that same day the Foundation announced its “Road To Groundbreaking” campaign, aimed at getting evidently much-needed donations from local corporations.  Combatting the parallel lawsuit and the related negative publicity has been a major focus of the Foundation ever since. As the proceedings for the complaint dragged on, the POP team filed a request for a temporary injunction prohibiting any construction until the issue was decided.  A week later, on June 23,  the Obama Foundation announced that it would begin construction work in Jackson Park on August16, with the City beginning to re-route traffic around Jackson Park on Friday the 13th of August, an ironically appropriate date for those of us opposed to the OPC plan.  

This past week,  Judge John Robert Blakey ruled against the request for a temporary injunction against any construction .  While the judge’s decision has been announced, the written opinion that explains the decision has yet to be issued. The POP team is expected to appeal the injunction ruling right away.

The Tribune editorialized today that “the court has spoken” and the OPC project should proceed.  We think that is not correct.  The Court has spoken only about the motion for an injunction to pause construction.  But it has not yet ruled on the substantive complaint about the faulty process of the federal reviews of the OPC site plan.  The Tribune’s wink-wink suggestion that the digging should begin immediately because it would then be harder for a court to stop the project shows a lamentable and inappropriate disregard for the legal process.  The OPC project, however worthy in its aims, has been a sweetheart deal from the beginning.  It would have received a better reception had proper procedures been followed throughout; they should be followed now.

The Tribune editorial concludes “Time now for everyone to move forward together. And for the Obamas and their supporters to live up to their ask.”   We suggest that the Obama Foundation begin by abiding by the terms of the Master Agreement.  

Where’s the money?

Has the Obama Foundation  met all of the stipulations required by the 2018 Ordinance authorizing the City’s handover of 19.2 acres of Jackson Park?  The Master Agreement, drafted by the City and the Foundation and signed on May17, 2019 (one of the final acts of Rahm Emanuel’s administration),  specifies deliverables that must be provided before the City and the Foundation can sign the Use Agreement that would turn over the park site to the Foundation. It remains unclear if the Obama Foundation has yet met all of the requirements stipulated.

JPW has submitted multiple FOIA requests to the City’s Department of Planning and Development to try to determine if all the conditions were being met in full or if they were being side-stepped in the same way that the federal review regulations were.  Has the City done its due diligence or has it waived certain requirements waivers?  

Most troublesome is the indication that the Obama Foundation has not fulfilled its obligations to submit both a final budget for construction of the OPC and a certification that the Foundation has in hand funds to  cover fully that cost

∙         On March 12 the Foundation submitted what was then labeled a total final construction budget of $482M and an accountant’s certification that it had $485M in hand to cover that cost.

∙         On June 4, however, Foundation president Valerie Jarret announced to the Economic Club of Chicago that instead the cost of building the OPC would be close to $700M, blowing away the long-standing prior estimate of close to $500M.   No explanation was given then or since for that sudden, large jump.  

∙         As of July 28, the City Department of Planning and Development responded to a FOIA request that it did not have a revised construction budget or a revised certification of funds reflecting that new $700M figure.

∙         Adding to the confusion is a declaration submitted to the federal court on July 15 as part of the Obama Foundation’s defense against the request for an injunction against construction. There  Robbin Cohen, Executive Vice President of the Foundation, provided a much different, much smaller figure for gifts and pledges dedicated to the construction of the OPC – only something over $200 million. 

Another requirement specified in the Master Agreement — that the Obama Foundation must establish an endowment  dedicated to paying the operating and maintenance costs of the OPC when needed  — has also prompted questions and confusion.  JPW submitted several FOIA requests for certification of that obligation being met.  Finally, last week, we received a copy of a letter from Robbin Cohen to DPD Commissioner Maurice Cox, dated August 3, stating that the Foundation had established and funded an endowment account of $1 million as of June 22. That dollar number is not a typo, so it should be noted that an endowment of that size would yield only about $50,000 per year, very far from the millions that would be needed to sustain the OPC.   And is it a coincidence that the City received formal notification of the endowment only after a FOIA inquiry was made?

The City’s due diligence and the Foundation’s compliance look decidedly sketchy.  The taxpayers of Chicago have the right to know if there is secure and sufficient private funding for the OPC before ground is broken. 

Both sides now

The legal challenges and counter maneuvers have focused new attention on the many troublesome issues raised by the proposal for the OPC – e.g., the gift of public parkland to a private organization, the destruction of the historic Olmsted design, the environmental impact of the loss of hundreds of mature trees.   Local commentator Leonard Goodman offered a summary of issues not fully covered by mainstream media.  Politico highlighted the difficulties of penetrating the protective shield around the Obama project, no matter how substantive the legal issues. W.J.T. Mitchell, one of the plaintiffs in the challenge to the federal reviews, presented a particularly poignant statement of the dilemma now facing us all.

Want to take action?

Area residents frustrated or confused by the planned road work and the lack of timely information about its details or by the incomplete information about funding for the OPC or by any other aspect of the OPC project may want to contact the Alderman or City officials.  

Links to local media outlets are available at http://jacksonparkwatch.org/take-action-2/.     

THANK YOU FOR YOUR DONATIONS!

Thanks to all who have supported us financially.  As always, we will welcome your contributions.  If you have any questions about contributing, please contact us at jacksonparkwatch@gmail.com and we will get back to you.

You can contribute in three ways:

∙         You can contribute via checks made out to Jackson Park Watch sent directly to Jackson Park Watch, P.O. Box 15302, Chicago 60615. 

∙         You can contribute via PayPal here.  (If you encounter difficulties with PayPal, please let us know.)

∙         You can contribute via checks from donor-directed funds sent to our fiscal sponsor Friends of the Parks at FOTP, 67 E. Madison St., Suite 1817, Chicago  IL 60602, ATTN Kevin Winters.  Such checks should be made out to FOTP with a note stating they are intended for Jackson Park Watch.

As always, we thank you.

Brenda Nelms and Jack Spicer
Co-presidents, Jackson Park Watch
www.jacksonparkwatch.org
jacksonparkwatch@gmail.com

JACKSON PARK WATCH UPDATE, August 29, 2021

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Greetings, all, 

The City and the Obama Foundation signed the final legal agreements turning over 19.3 acres of Jackson Park to the Foundation on August 13 and preparatory site work for the Obama Presidential Center began on August 16.  It is a sad time for those who believe, first and foremost, in the rule of law and process.  

A reminder of how we got to this point

The saga of the OPC has been something of  shell game from the beginning, focused on the glitter rather than the gritty details:

  • In 2014 the University of Chicago competed for the Barack Obama Presidential Library by submitting designs for sites that it did not control, in public parks near the campus.  (None of the designs or terms offered by the University were made public until 2018, when a law suit filed by Protect Our Parks prompted their release.)  
  • In 2015 the City Council, under Mayor Rahm Emanuel, responding to a request by the Obama Foundation, adopted an ordinance defining very specific sites in Jackson Park and Washington Park that would be used for the Presidential Library if one of the University’s proposals was selected by the Obamas.  In 2016 the Obama Foundation designated Jackson Park as its choice.
  • In 2017, the Obama Foundation unveiled the design it had commissioned, revealing,  without any advance public notice, that the boundaries of the site codified by the 2015 ordinance had been modified to take over parts of Cornell Drive and Midway Plaisance.  In addition, the enterprise was now identified not as a Presidential Library, but as a Presidential Center,  disconnected from the National Archives and Records Administration and the standard financial requirements and guarantees that that relationship would have provided.
  • Beginning in 2017 the City stressed that the proposal for Jackson Park would be thoroughly vetted by a series of required federal reviews to assure that the historical and environmental integrity of Jackson Park would not be compromised.  But the City also decreed that it had sole authority to decide what happened in Jackson Park and therefore the reviews would be directed not at the OPC project itself, but only at proposed changes in other areas of the park.
  • In 2018 Mayor Emanuel orchestrated adoption a new ordinance to approve the revised site plan for the OPC.  City officials and staff touted a series of legal agreements attached to the ordinance that would  guarantee its success as a privately funded gift to the City. The first of those documents – the Master Agreement – was signed on May 17, 2019,  three days before Mayor Emanuel left office.
  • In 2020, the federal reviews ended with the determination that the project could proceed as proposed   This conclusion was reached even though the Assessment of Effects to Historical Properties had determined that the OPC along with the proposed road changes and other changes to accommodate the OPC would have an adverse effect on Jackson Park and the Midway Plaisance, and even though the review process had failed to consider any alternative designs as required by both the historical and environmental review regulations.
  • On August 13, 2021,  the City signed the legal agreements transferring the park site to the Obama Foundation, as reported by Lynn Sweet in the Sun-Times, even though the Foundation had failed to comply with all of the terms of the Master Agreement, particularly the requirements to provide a final, accurate construction budget and certification that the Foundation had in hand sufficient funds to cover that budget.  And the land transfer proceeded in spite of an ongoing lawsuit challenging the federal review process and seeking an injunction against construction work. 

So where are we now?

Site preparations are proceeding in Jackson Park.
Tree-cutting on the OPC site is scheduled to begin the week of August 30.  Based on 2018 tree studies, there are approximately 400 trees on the OPC site.  In an effort to “green wash” this destruction,  about 200 of the tree trunks will be saved and used in various ways – furniture for the OPC, art installations, ornamentation in the buildings – though exact plans have not yet been made.  This number does not include an additional 400 trees to be removed elsewhere in the park by CDOT as part of the road work.  At the July 20 court hearing, one of the defendants’ lawyers put the total  number of  trees to be removed for the project at 789, to which Judge Blakey commented “that’s a large number.”

Legal challenges continue

  • The primary suit filed in April by Protect Our Parks and six individual plaintiffs to challenge the federal review process and also advance state law claims  continues in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
  • In addition, the POP+ legal team has filed in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals an appeal from the District Court’s denial of the motion for a preliminary injunction to stop further construction while the initial case is concluded.  The appellate court has agreed to hear the appeal on an expedited schedule that calls for opening briefs by September 20 and for oral argument later in the fall.  

    Even though construction work has begun, an injunction for a stoppage remains a possibility that could preserve many (though, alas, not all) of the historic and environmental resources in Jackson Park.
  • Also, the Obama Foundation’s failure to meet all of the terms of the Master Agreement that gave it control of the  park land requires more scrutiny and presents a possible new avenue for legal challenge.   Other areas of concern are being examined as well. 

Obama Foundation financial problems multiply
The financial straits and strategies of the Obama Foundation, as detailed in the Sun-Times and also in the Tribune, are receiving increasing scrutiny.   The imbalance between the now-announced  cost of construction and outfitting of the OPC to open in 2025 ($830 million) and the declared funds in the Foundation’s hands now (maybe $485 million, maybe $200 million)  is worrisome to say the least. 

Two days after it took control of the site, the Foundation released its annual report for 2020 and announced a fundraising goal of $1.6 billion over the next five years in order to complete the funding for the OPC as well as to support its global programming and provide an endowment to maintain the OPC going forward.  To put that ambitious goal in perspective, it requires the Foundation to secure $320 million in new contributions each year.  That’s about double the Foundation’s total receipts for 2020.  For comparison, it is also 25% more than a much larger institution – the University of Chicago – received in private gifts in 2020. So the challenge is huge and the risks are great.  And if the fundraising goal is not met, what happens?  Well, the property – disrupted and damaged – should revert back to the City, a potential financial burden for a perennially stretched City budget.  

Park District’s hidden moves 

  • The Park District’s ill-conceived and unpublicized plan to let Amazon rent space in public parks for its lockers had targeted Jackson Park as well as Midway Plaisance and South Shore Cultural Center for the installations.  Thanks to the outpouring of opposition and the quick response of surprised Alderman Leslie Hairston,  there will be no lockers in 5th Ward parks, but the episode shines a bright light on the Park District’s lack of transparency and its strategy to monetize parkland instead of protecting it as a public good.
  • The Park District, with only one day’s notice, installed gates on the bridges leading to Wooded Island, ending all access to the island between dusk and dawn. Security issues on the Island have been discussed for some time, prompted by recurring vandalism of the Japanese Garden, but the timing of the sudden installation – just as construction work began on the OPC site adjacent to Wooded Island – has led many residents to fear the imposition of additional restrictions on free access to Jackson Park in the future.  Conflicting explanations and claims about park usage and security plans by the Park District, Alderman Hairston, and the Obama Foundation have not reassured regular park users.
  • The Park District seems to have jumped the gun also regarding plans to install a children’s play area on the eastern tip of Midway Plaisance (between the Metra tracks and Stony Island) to replace recreational space  in Jackson Park lost to the OPC’s  buildings and paved plaza.  The substitution was part of the Memorandum of Agreement  signed in late 2020 as part of the conclusion of federal reviews.   The MOA specified that there was to be a 45-day period for public review and comment on that proposal before a final decision was made about the design for the space  As far as we and others who focus on the Midway Plaisance know, no such review period has been announced and none of the promised consultations with Park District staff have been scheduled.  Yet on July 30 the Park District posted on its Procurement Portal a Request for Proposal P-21010  Midway Plaisance East End Improvements, with a submission deadline of September 1; that seems to indicate that the plans are set in ink if not in stone.  So much for public review and comment.

Pause Mode for the Golf Course Merger
The bursts of activity by the Obama Foundation and City for the OPC have brought some renewed focus on the linked proposal to develop a PGA-level golf course in Jackson Park.  As David Roeder of the Sun-Times put it, “whatever happened to the golf course idea?”  He reviewed the 5-year saga of that half-baked idea – another top-down plan from Mayor Emanuel – and concluded that fundraising and political problems have put it on hold, “stuck in the rough,” at least for the moment.  We note that the very expensive road underpasses that are essential to the current golf plan are isolated in the CDOT plans as “Phase 3, Post-2025,” to be addressed after the OPC road work is completed.  We expect that the available federal highway funding, approved in 2018, would be long exhausted by then, but we will keep watch.

Make your voice heard

Links to local media outlets are available at http://jacksonparkwatch.org/take-action-2/.     

THANK YOU FOR YOUR DONATIONS!
Thanks to all who have supported us financially.  As always, we will welcome your contributions.  If you have any questions about contributing, please contact us at jacksonparkwatch@gmail.com and we will get back to you.

You can contribute in three ways:

∙         You can contribute via checks made out to Jackson Park Watch sent directly to Jackson Park Watch, P.O. Box 15302, Chicago 60615. 

∙         You can contribute via PayPal here.  (If you encounter difficulties with PayPal, please let us know.)

∙         You can contribute via checks from donor-directed funds sent to our fiscal sponsor Friends of the Parks at FOTP, 67 E. Madison St., Suite 1817, Chicago  IL 60602, ATTN Kevin Winters.  Such checks should be made out to FOTP with a note stating they are intended for Jackson Park Watch.

As always, we thank you.

Brenda Nelms and Jack Spicer
Co-presidents, Jackson Park Watch
www.jacksonparkwatch.org
jacksonparkwatch@gmail.com

JACKSON PARK WATCH UPDATE, July 26, 2021

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Tracking  the OPC

There has been much activity this month, but it’s hard to tell in what direction it is heading.

In the Courts

On July 20 there was a hearing in the U.S. District Court on the Motion for Preliminary Injunction filed last month by attorneys for Protect Our Parks and its six co-plaintiffs  related to construction work for the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park.  The injunction would prohibit any construction work for the OPC until the resolution of POP’s Complaint (filed in April) charging that the federal reviews of the OPC were fundamentally flawed and that they must be re-done.  Consideration of that Complaint has been stymied by the Defendants, who are looking to stall that legal review as long as possible.

The central focus of the POP Complaint – that the federal reviews of the OPC project ignored  statutory requirements to include consideration of “all feasible and prudent alternatives” and to prohibit segmentation of the project – was generally side-stepped or avoided entirely in the oral statements by the Defendants’ legal team.

∙         The lawyer for the federal agencies mentioned that alternative locations had already been looked at by the City before it had approved the choice of Jackson Park.  But there is absolutely no evidence of such due diligence and ample evidence that the City deferred completely to the Obama Foundation. 

∙         The lawyers for the City and Park District stressed that the OPC had been approved by the City Council, the Planning Commission, and the Park District Board, and that was all that was needed.

∙         The lawyer for the Obama Foundation went even farther afield, arguing that the Plaintiffs would not suffer “irreparable harm” as claimed if construction began because any changes made during construction (we would point to the cutting of some 800-1000 trees) would have only a temporary negative  impact.  Instead, the Foundation lawyer asserted that any delay in the construction schedule would cause irreparable, devastating harm to the contractors hired to build the OPC and to the  Obama Foundation itself, endangering its financial status and its fundraising efforts. 

The Foundation’s alarmist argument points to the still open question of whether it has securely in hand, as required, sufficient funds for construction costs that have risen to around $700 million. The Foundation’s court filing reported that it had some $200 million in donations and pledges restricted specifically for the construction of the OPC as planned and expressed great concern that further delay and uncertainty would put it at risk of losing some of those funds. There seems to be little financial cushion there.

Judge Blakey has not set a schedule for a final ruling on the Motion for Preliminary Injunction.  That will come sometime after the  POP legal team has filed an additional brief (due by the end of this week) and after the submission of any additional material by the Defendants.

For those wanting more detail about the hearing, the texts of the POP motion and the responses filed by the  Defendants (Federal agencies, City and Chicago Park District, and Obama Foundation) have been usefully posted or reported on by the Hyde Park Herald.   A broader perspective on the legal issues and history of the OPC saga is provided in the Chicago Reader.

In the media

Meanwhile, the Obama Foundation, with the support of the City, has been waging a  major marketing campaign for several months now to cultivate support for the OPC by Chicago residents and, most especially,  potential donors.

Most recently, Valerie Jarrett, President of the Foundation, published an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune, proclaiming that the OPC is coming and the South Side will reap the benefits and repeating unsubstantiated promises for high numbers of annual visitors yielding large economic benefits.  Jarrett dismissed those challenging the OPC plans as “a few voices from outside the community.”

That mischaracterization prompted a strong response — Right project, wrong location — from Hyde Parker Jamie Kalven of the Invisible Institute and a plaintiff in the lawsuit challenging the federal review process.  Kalven pointed to the specific legal basis for the suit and extended an invitation to the Obama Foundation to engage, at long last, in an open discussion of “feasible and prudent alternatives.”

Expressions of concern about the location of the OPC in Jackson Park continue steadily, with some recent letters to the Tribune catching attention. One challenged the claim that the OPC will fail to attract visitors unless it is in Jackson Park, a fear, the writer noted, that only perpetuates the underselling of the South Side and deprives the area of a powerful catalyst for development in a non-park location. Another proclaimed that Jackson Park belongs not just to the South Side but to the entire city, and asked why parkland must be destroyed when there are other viable site options that would assure the success of the OPC in redeveloping the South Side without the destruction of the park.

Earlier in July the Tribune  offered, at least indirectly, yet another commentary on the OPC plan when it editorialized about the tawdry saga of the City’s capitulation to the Bears in disfiguring Soldier Field twenty years ago.  Now, it concluded, “Chicago has a lakefront eyesore and the Bears have an inadequate stadium” that they may soon abandon.   Commonalities between the Soldier Field debacle and the looming shadow of the OPC had already been presented in late June in a cautionary op-ed by Michael Rachlis and Richard Epstein, lawyers for the POP lawsuits.  They warned about the unanticipated burden on taxpayers as a result of such sweetheart deals pushed through without full review or consideration of long-term consequences.

It seems all too likely that twenty years from now there could be a similar reevaluation of the OPC if it is constructed in Jackson Park as now proposed.  

THANK YOU FOR YOUR DONATIONS!

Thanks to all who have supported us financially.  As always, we will welcome your contributions.  If you have any questions about contributing, please contact us at jacksonparkwatch@gmail.com and we will get back to you.

You can contribute in three ways:

∙         You can contribute via checks made out to Jackson Park Watch sent directly to Jackson Park Watch, P.O. Box 15302, Chicago 60615. 

∙         You can contribute via PayPal here.  (If you encounter difficulties with PayPal, please let us know.)

∙         You can contribute via checks from donor-directed funds sent to our fiscal sponsor Friends of the Parks at FOTP, 67 E. Madison St., Suite 1817, Chicago  IL 60602, ATTN Kevin Winters.  Such checks should be made out to FOTP with a note stating they are intended for Jackson Park Watch.

As always, we thank you.

Brenda Nelms and Jack Spicer
Co-presidents, Jackson Park Watch
www.jacksonparkwatch.org
jacksonparkwatch@gmail.com