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Former President Obama just loves being front and center of all the attention in the media. The headlines are usually about some new scandal Obama is apart of, or his poorly executed plans during his presidency that are barely coming to the surface. Now the former president has been caught red handed in a “bait and switch” in personal museum scandal. His new plan is to snatch some public land right from under the noses of the people of Chicago. Obama wants to create a Presidential Library in the Public Park Land. However, some people are not too happy about...

If former President Barack Obama wants the Obama Presidential Center to define his legacy, he’s going to have to let life go full circle. That means climbing off his presidential high horse and returning to his roots as a community organizer. Once Obama announced his library would be in Chicago, it was as if the former president had suddenly turned into a greedy real estate developer. And unfortunately, the manner in which the project was unveiled wasn’t inclusive. Jeanette Taylor, the education director for the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, Taylor said she asked the former president why he wouldn’t sign...

This is a story of priorities and hypocrisy, brought to us by a president who saved the Union and was murdered for it, and a president whose policies and malevolence damaged both the nation and the world, and who is being rewarded for it. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation is in trouble. It is auctioning off non-Lincoln related artifacts in an effort to pay back a loan that is coming due. You see, the Lincoln Library doesn’t make a lot of money or attract enough major donors to operate. This is odd, considering President Lincoln is a “favorite” president...

The complaint cites an "institutional bait and switch" because the original plan was for a federal entity to take possession of the land and build an Obama Presidential 'Library', which would be 'publicly owned and controlled'...... That was the bait used to obtain priceless open park land that would be taken away from the citizens of Chicago.... The switch came when the presidential library plan was sidelined, and in its place was instituted a "presidential center" that would be under the control of a private foundation, with Barack Obama 'himself in a position to shape the center's planning, mission, and...

Activists filed a federal lawsuit Monday to block construction of the Obama Presidential Center on Chicago’s historic public parklands. Protect Our Parks Inc. accused organizers of an “institutional bait and switch” by initially advertising the center as the 44th president’s official library. “In August 2016, the City and the Park District publically announced that the Obama Presidential Library, promised to include all of the former President’s official records, would be built in Jackson Park,” the lawsuit reads. “Then, in May 2017, after the Defendants’ public announcement that a true ‘Presidential Library’ would be built, the Obamas did an about face...

CHICAGO — Last month, when hundreds of people showed up at a downtown convention center to hear plans for the Obama Presidential Center (OPC), a campus dedicated to the legacy of Barack Obama, the former president himself arrived unannounced and in full campaign mode to do some hard selling. “This could anchor a transformation of the South Side to create more jobs, more business opportunities, more educational opportunities, more hope. This is our gift. This is us wanting to give back,” he said. But while Obama is embraced in his home town, the OPC has become a flash point for...

A panel of national and local experts, comprised mostly of African-Americans, lambasted Chicago city officials in a meeting Wednesday night for how they have worked closely with the Obama Foundation to build the Obama Presidential Center on public land despite criticism and serious concerns from representatives of the South Side neighborhood. "You have all this talk about collusion between Trump and Russia, right? To me, that sounds like collusion between the city and the university, and we see the same thing happening in relation to this," one of the panelists, Jawanza Malone, executive director of the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization, said....

When Barack Obama was President of the United States, he eagerly used his “pen and phone” to achieve his grand environmental objective of locking up public lands to keep them from private use... ...Citizen Obama uses a different playbook now that he is embroiled in his own personal land-use controversy. The Obama Foundation is in a fierce struggle over its proposal, now before The Chicago Parks Commission, to locate the new Obama Presidential Center (OPC) in the high-rent district of Jackson Park on the South Side of Chicago.

Chicagoans in droves are venting their displeasure with former President Barack Obama’s planned library, calling it an “ugly waste of taxpayer resources” and a “dangerous precedent” for the preservation of historic public parklands. Recent letters to the editor published in the Chicago Tribune overwhelmingly have panned the Obama Presidential Center, which will consume nearly 20 acres from historic Jackson Park and cost taxpayers $100 million in renovations to the surrounding area.

The Obama Foundation originally said it would house a presidential library on the property and vowed to have the National Archives oversee the facility because of its placement on public land. But that's no longer the case, and some are balking at the change in plans. The Obama Foundation released plans last week for the presidential center it plans to build in Chicago's Jackson Park, but behind the scenes, a battle is taking place to keep the former Democratic president from building on that specific lot of land, and there's still a chance that it gets delayed when it seeks...

The Obama Foundation released plans last week for the presidential center it plans to build in Chicago's Jackson Park, but behind the scenes, a battle is taking place to keep the former Democratic president from building on that specific plot of land, and there's still a chance that it gets delayed when it seeks federal approval. What initially started out as a library has morphed into a 20-acre private "center," and some environmentalists and historians are unhappy with the Obama Foundation's plans to swoop in and take over a national historic place.

The first community organizer to become president has managed to anger community groups so much with his planned personal monument, aka a "presidential center," that part of the plan was just scrapped. Lolly Bowean of the Chicago Tribune reports: Bowing to community pressure, the Obama Foundation has scrapped its plan for an above-ground parking garage and will instead build an underground facility below the presidential center in Jackson Park, officials said late Monday. The original plan would have grabbed a treasured part of Chicago's park system, the Midway (site of Chicago's World's Fair), for a two-story garage. The group Save...

Back in his community-organizing days, Barack Obama would have been the one fighting to save historic public parks from developers. Today, the 44th president finds himself on the other side of the underserved communities he once championed. Grass-roots activists, conservationists and academics on Chicago’s South Side say the Obama Presidential Center, as currently planned, does not do enough to benefit neighborhoods badly in need of economic revitalization. The Obama Foundation rejected a proposed Washington Park site that would have made the center easily accessible through public transportation, opting instead for a lush Jackson Park location that overlooks Lake Michigan. Charles...

Barack Obama may be the pride of University of Chicago, but a lot of heavy hitters there are strongly opposing current plans for his library. More than 100 U of C faculty members who say they support the location of an Obama Center near the campus nevertheless are opposing plans for it on economic and preservation grounds. They say the center’s proposed location lacks room to jump-start economic development, and its footprint will consume parts of historic Jackson Park and the Midway Plaisance. “Not only are public lands being given to a private entity but the public will pay to...

In their effort to break the mold, the planners of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago are taking heat for some less-than-lofty features in the sprawling complex. Namely, a “test kitchen.” Reports first surfaced last fall that the monument to the first black president’s legacy was taking on an activity-center vibe. There would be a museum – but also a basketball court, possibly a room for yoga classes, and a test kitchen to teach visitors “about the full production cycle of nutritious food.”

Barack Obama’s Obama Presidential Center, a three-building complex designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien on Chicago’s South Side, has made its intention to embrace its neighborhood very clear—specifically Jackson Park and the Midway Plaisance, the historic Frederick Law Olmsted–designed greenways that have hosted, among other things, the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, a.k.a. the “White City.” But what the Center hasn’t made as clear is that the complex’s footprint is growing, with its leaders recently proposing an aboveground parking garage that could take up about five acres of the Midway. The library’s concession for eating into this space is a...

Looks like Barack Obama is going to have to learn to live with disappointment. He has prepared for his presidential library for years. It’s part of his legacy. When Obama was elected, Chicago treated him literally as if he was the second coming of Christ. He was their favorite son. Nine years later, not so much. They are beginning to see the real Barack Obama at long last. The citizens of Chicago are balking at the plans for Obama’s library. In its initial bid for the right to host the library, put forth on behalf of the city, the University...

The Fox News headline sums up the issue at hand: "No Obama documents in Obama library? Historians puzzled by Chicago center plans." The article continues, "The Obama Foundation is taking an unconventional approach to the presidential center and library being planned in Chicago. It's opting to host a digital archive of President Barack Obama's records, but not keep his hard-copy manuscripts and letters and other documents onsite." The Chicago Tribune broke the story that, to this point, has attracted no major media attention. Its headline raises much the same question Fox News did: "Without archives on site, how will Obama...

Unlike traditional presidential libraries, the Obama Presidential Center will not actually have library materials. That is—it will not house former President Obama’s manuscripts, documents, letters, and gifts from his tenure in office—items presidential centers around the country all have. Instead, it will include space for outdoor functions and picnics, a basketball court, recording studio, sledding hill, children’s play garden, and more. As for the actual library documents, the center will rely online archives for Obama’s presidential materials as a way to avoid meeting federal standards in construction, raising money for an endowment, and paying the National Archives and Records Administration...

At a recent community forum to discuss plans for the Obama Presidential Center, Karin Droegemueller stepped up to the microphone and introduced herself as an "angry birder." She is among a flock of birders who fear that the proposed $30 million Tiger Woods golf course and expanded driving range tied to the development of the Obama Center will ward off the millions of migratory birds that stop in Jackson Park, and displace the nearly 300 species that have helped make the park a favorite Chicago birding destination... But not all open land is equal, they say. A manicured golf course...