Obama centre could force low-income blacks out
Last month, when hundreds of people showed up at a downtown convention centre in Chicago to hear plans for the Obama Presidential Centre (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 flashpoint for many of the issues that the former South Side community organiser once railed against: gentrification, affordable housing, government accountability and transparency.
Since it was announced, the OPC has received strong pushback from people who say the Jackson Park location, which borders different neighbourhoods, will destroy valuable green space while driving up property values that will displace people who are already living paycheque to paycheque.
Set to occupy nearly eight hectares of Jackson Park, one of Chicago’s oldest green spaces, adjacent to Lake Michigan, the OPC is intended not as a traditional presidential library but as a gathering place designed to galvanise young people and to show them how to put their ideas for change into action.
‘‘What [the Obamas] wanted was essentially a centre that would serve as a campus, a place for civic engagement and training and inspiring citizen leaders,’’ said Obama Foundation chief executive David Simas.
The idea to plant roots on the South Side is an easy one for the former first couple, who represent the area’s greatest success story. They still own a home there, and pictures of the Obamas still line the walls of restaurants and barbershops nearby. Tourists can even take a tour that tracks their fabled first date, culminating at a corner of 53rd St where they shared a first kiss.
The OPC will consist of four buildings: a two-storey ‘‘forum’’ for public programming; a museum tower; a library; and an athletic centre.
The foundation is not yet clear about the partnerships or programming that will take place inside the campus, although some features have been tossed around, like a podcast recording studio and a test kitchen.
The library will not house the physical archives of the Obama administration but instead will serve as a component of the Chicago Public Library system, although the nature of that partnership is not yet clear.
Some of the displacement fear is rooted against the University of Chicago after it pursued one of the largest urban renewal projects in the US in the late 1950s, a period of demolitions and acquisitions that ended up displacing 30,000 people from their homes and saw the neighbourhood’s black population fall by 40 per cent by 1970.
‘‘That’s not history for us,’’ said Jawanza Malone, executive director of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organisation, which operates after-school programmes and food pantries for about 6500 low-income people in the area.
He is concerned that gentrification is behind the continued exodus of black people from Chicago. Between 2000 and 2015, census data shows, more than 200,000 black people left the city. Analysts say the reasons for the loss in black residents are mixed and include rapid gentrification, a lack of jobs and stability, the dismantling of public housing, and violence.
‘‘For us, the population loss is because of bad public policy. It becomes a never-ending cycle. It raises the questions: why is this happening, and is it unintentional or intentional?’’ Malone asked.
Those living near the Obama centre site are particularly vulnerable. According to a study last year by the DePaul University Institute for Housing Studies, more than 14,000 households living in the vicinity of Jackson Park need affordable housing.
About two dozen community, preservation and fair housing groups are pressing the Obama Foundation, the city of Chicago and the University of Chicago to sign a Community Benefits Agreement to force them to commit to measures that will prevent the most vulnerable from leaving their homes. The agreement would include measures such as a property tax freeze for nearby building owners, setting money aside for lowincome housing assistance, and monitoring to ensure that local hiring promised during the construction period remains local.
Obama has said he won’t sign. ‘‘We will not displace residents,’’ he said, adding that the project would create US$3 billion in economic activity and 5000 permanent jobs.
‘‘If rents go up, [residents[ can afford to pay it because they will have jobs,’’ he said.
People like activist Anton Seals Jr say that by not signing the agreement, the foundation is asking for the blind trust of lowincome people. ‘‘Their mind is, ‘We’ll let the market handle it’. That usually means disaster for black people.’’
Preservationists and green space activists say the foundation should have chosen a second site offered by the city: 41⁄2ha of vacant or underused parcels inland from Lake Michigan are owned by the city, the University of Chicago and the Chicago Transit Authority, in a more impoverished side of town that sorely needs economic development.
Simas says the Obamas were not interested in that site because it did not have what Jackson Park does: closer quarters next to the Museum of Science and Industry, Lake Shore Drive and the University of Chicago campus.
‘‘It was a real opportunity to ask, where could this place have the greatest impact? And so Jackson Park was heads and shoulders above other sites in supporting its mission.’’
A lawsuit filed in February by the Coalition to Save Jackson Park, an activist group, against the Chicago Park District is an effort to see all documentation related to the OPC deal.
Even staff at the University of Chicago, where Obama once taught, are divided. More than 180 faculty members have signed an online petition against the OPC, saying ‘‘it will soon become an object lesson in the mistakes of the past’’.