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Cook County which the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) expects to grow by approximately
850,000 residents and 435,000 jobs in the next 25 years. When combined with the current migration of the
population to urban centers and towards urban waterfronts, there is significant anticipated growth in these
neighborhoods that will create even higher demand for parks and open space as a respite from higher urban
densities.
It would be a tribute to the legacy of your history of community organizing if the decision regarding your library
site underscored the important principle that parks are the lungs of a city that contribute to quality of life and
the health of our residents. Parks play an important role in the sense of space and place in our neighborhoods and
are one of the few places where diverse populations come together in community. We discount the argument
that placement of buildings in parks creates safety and is the only way to draw people to recreational open spaces
in transitional neighborhoods. Well-targeted recreational investment and community support would return these
parks to the thriving, safe and collaborative spaces they once were and are designed to be much more effectively
than would the placement of a Presidential Library.
We further discount that any option that involves building on existing parkland can be truly park-positive, even if
it was accompanied by the demolition of existing park buildings or the replacement of newly acquired parkland
(and dedication of park capital improvement dollars) elsewhere, particularly when the design of a historic park is
being negatively impacted. There is already significant competitive demand for the use of our Citys parks,
including both Washington and Jackson Parks, with little underutilized space during peak periods.
Building in our open spaces sets a dangerous precedent for the rest of the citys open spaces as we would proceed
down a slippery slope of building in our parks and public open spaces which are non-renewable resources and our
citys greatest natural assets. Chicagos parks system, our public lakefront and our boulevards are central features
which distinguish Chicago and allows it to compete internationally as a world-class city that benefits from a legacy
of forward-thinking vision.
In support of Chicagos two University bids, we hope you will select Chicago as the home of the Obama Presidential
Library, but that you reject the concept of a campus setting in an existing and instead use placement of your library
as the model for good urban community development without eroding parkland. We ask you to strongly consider
the two Chicago proposals that do not erode Chicago parks or public open space:
A rising urban beacon that integrates the historic street grid with appropriately higher density on the
University of Chicagos own non-park land west of Martin Luther King Drive at Garfield Boulevard, or
The truly park-positive alternative adding newly-created park space and increased public access to public
transportation while bridging communities of the University of Illinois proposal on Chicagos west side.
Friends of the Parks supports both of these non-park options. The selection of one of these two site alternatives
will stand as a symbol of your commitment to the preservation of important community open space resources and
healthy urban growth which we will continue to strive for in our city, the home of our nations first communitygrown president.
Most sincerely,
Lauren Moltz
Board Chair
cc:
Fred Bates
Board Vice-Chair
Cassandra J. Francis
President