Tag: Obama Presidential Center

Contributor Post Created with Sketch. The Obama Presidential Center Nuisance

Richard Epstein
By Richard Epstein
Richard Epstein Contributor
Known to students at the University of Chicago and NYU law schools as “the libertarian,” Richard Epstein has established himself as an expert in constitutional law, contracts, corporate law, real estate law, torts, labor law—and even Roman law. He is reputed to be more knowledgeable about Justinian’s Code than anyone since the Emperor Justinian himself. The Peter and Kirsten Bedford senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Richard Epstein is the author of several books including, The Cas… [more]
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I argued last week before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of Protect Our Parks, which sued the City of Chicago in order to stop the construction of the Obama Presidential Center (OPC) in Jackson Park. The OPC is not a Presidential Library, and it serves no official public function. At this time, it is useful to put the current litigation in its larger context, given the other regulatory obstacles relating to historical preservation and environmental protection that must be overcome to allow the Obama Foundation to build the OPC in Jackson Park.

To set the stage, the social case for keeping the OPC out of Jackson Park is powerful. The entire venture envisions a constellation of four separate buildings constructed on a 19.3-acre site located on the northwest side of Jackson Park, close to the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry. The Park was designed in 1871 by the great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. Consistent with the original plan, it incorporated large bodies of water, including the east and west lagoon, with direct connections to Lake Michigan. The four buildings of the planned OPC include a 235-foot museum tower, a conference center, an athletic center, and a new branch of the Chicago public library, all serviced by a 400-car underground garage.

In order to put this center in place, it will be necessary to, first, close Cornell Drive, a major six-lane north-south road (and a key original element of the Olmsted design) that connects South Chicago and Indiana to the loop, and to, second, limit access to three other roads, including the Midway Plaisance that connects the University of Chicago campus to Lake Shore Drive, the major thoroughfare along Lake Michigan. Shutting down these roads to make way for the OPC will require expanding two other thoroughfares, Lake Shore Drive to the east and Stony Island Avenue on the west. Those two additions will both narrow Jackson Park, as well as ensnarl heavy traffic throughout the area.

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Contributor Post Created with Sketch. Chicago’s New Obama Burden

Richard Epstein
By Richard Epstein
Richard Epstein Contributor
Known to students at the University of Chicago and NYU law schools as “the libertarian,” Richard Epstein has established himself as an expert in constitutional law, contracts, corporate law, real estate law, torts, labor law—and even Roman law. He is reputed to be more knowledgeable about Justinian’s Code than anyone since the Emperor Justinian himself. The Peter and Kirsten Bedford senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Richard Epstein is the author of several books including, The Cas… [more]
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8 COMMENTS
 

The proposed construction of the extensive Obama Presidential Center on some 19.3 acres in Jackson Park on the south side of Chicago has long been a simmering issue of deep and continuous controversy. This past February, I stated my multiple objections to the choice of the historic site for the center and argued that on every conceivable ground it would be far better for the City of Chicago to construct it in Washington Park, located just to the west of Hyde Park. Washington Park is largely under-utilized and is a stone’s throw from the Chicago expressways. The Washington Park site will not require closing the major northbound roads that now run through Jackson Park, and it will not clash with other lakefront fixtures, including the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry located on the north end of Jackson Park. My views were hardly idiosyncratic; they were shared by at least 200 members of the University of Chicago faculty.

Objections to the project were effectively overridden when the Chicago City Council’s Committee on Housing and Real Estate gave the project its unanimous blessing on October 11. By that time, however, the action had started to shift to the courts: On May 14, a long-time activist group, Protect Our Parks, joined by several Chicago residents, filed a lawsuit whose sole purpose was to block the construction of the Obama center in Jackson Park. The suit seeks to invalidate the transfer of property rights in the Jackson Park land from the Park Department to the City of Chicago for the nominal price of $1, after which the City plans to designate it for use by the center, without making a formal transfer of title.

One of the grounds on which this transfer is challenged is that the City is barred by the so-called public trust doctrine from making the transfer. In response to this complaint, seven prominent law professors prepared a brief in which they announced that the public trust doctrine under its current interpretation gives the City ample grounds on which to complete the deal. In their view, the Court must give deference to the legislative decision and allow the transfer to go through. On this question, the precedents are divided and often confused. What follows is my analysis of how the public trust should apply, and why.

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