Posted on 07/06/2014 9:05:28 AM PDT by re_tail20
Among the rival locations in Chicago for the Obama library and museum, the most majestic one hugs the Lake Michigan shore on the Southeast Side with a stunning view of the Chicago skyline.
More than pretty, the Chicago Lakeside site has vast potential to trigger massive related economic growth and create jobs in an often ignored part of the city. With a presidential library and museum as an anchor, large-scale private investment that otherwise might take a generation to occur could happen in a decade.
“It is the most incredibly beautiful site in the city of Chicago,” developer Dan McCaffery is telling me as we discuss the bid for the library and museum he submitted to the Barack Obama Foundation last month. We’re talking in the suburban Washington office of his Chicago-based firm, where I had an exclusive look at the bid.
McCaffery, in a partnership with U.S. Steel, is offering the foundation free land: a prime location near 79th and the lake, the eastern-most point of the 589-acre Chicago Lakeside project.
These vacant acres were once the home of the razed U.S. Steel South Works, which closed in April 1992. The adjacent neighborhoods are where Obama once worked as a community organizer.
McCaffery uses the circle metaphor in talking about his bid, as in Obama coming full circle, building his presidential library near where he started his career.
The bid book, which includes an iPad loaded with a video about the site, has a steel ring embedded in the blue cover.
That circle is an “O,” of course, for Obama. But the ring also symbolize the steel-making roots of the site, the era when South Works was a mighty economic force, McCaffery reminds me.
That land can once again be part of the Chicago economy...
(Excerpt) Read more at politics.suntimes.com ...
At least at the Bill Clinton library you’d have a chance at getting a good massage.
Maybe a little further out from the shore?
Site of a closed steel plant. Appropriate.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.