Can you hear Olympic anthem in our skies? What could have been in Chi

President Barack Obama is expected to be in Chicago some time this week to make known the worst-kept secret – his presidential library and museum will be put in Jackson Park, not far from the University of Chicago and the Museum of Science and Industry.

 

What could have been this month in Chicago

But if one goes back a decade ago, Obama was supposed to bring the eyes of the world this week on Chicago to a site just a little further to the north, as in Washington Park.

BECAUSE THAT WAS supposed to be the site where an Olympic Stadium would be constructed – an 80,000-seat temporary structure that would have the opening ceremonies and major events for the Olympic Games that are scheduled to begin on Friday.

As for Jackson Park, it too was supposed to be part of the Olympiad plan – the plan was for a stadium to hold field hockey events would be built there, and that facility eventually would be converted into fields where soccer could be played.

But we all know how Chicago’s bid to be the host city for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games fell through. It turned out that amongst the four finalist cities that were seriously in the running, Chicago literally came up Number Four – as in the first one that was knocked out of the running.

It seems the International Olympic Committee was determined to put the games in a city south of the Equator – and Rio de Janeiro was the only such city in the running that year.

NOW I KNOW there are people out there who will vociferously argue that Chicago is so much better off not having been chosen. All the construction that it would have taken to turn the South Side into a series of venues usable for international athletic events would have cost us a bundle.

And for all the whining and moaning taking place these days about the Zika virus and the chances that world-class athletes will wind up being infected while there, you just know that with the homicide rate in Chicago drawing so much public attention, there would be all the world speculation that a world-class athlete would wind up getting gunned down in the bad-assed streets of Chi-town.

All it would take would be one stinkin’ little incident and the world would be dismissing a Chicago Olympiad as being an even bigger mistake than the ’96 games that were played in Atlanta.

OBAMA: Bringing eyes of nation to Jackson Pk

But I can ‘t help but wonder what could have been if we’d being hearing the Olympic theme echoing across the skies of Chicago, and countless renditions of national anthems from around the world providing inspiration to those world-class athletes getting a chance to say they performed their deeds here instead of Brazil.

IT COULD HAVE been an event of the scale of the World’s Fairs of 1892 or 1933 – something that could have gone into our history as a communal experience we all shared.

Something to show that Chicago is capable of a more serious public event than the Taste of Chicago or Lollapalooza!

It also could have been the chance to put to use those parks of Washington and Jackson, which I suspect many people in the metropolitan area don’t know much about because they’re just the South Side. In fact, I literally know some people who can’t tell the difference between the two and think they’re just one large strip of open land.

If anything, Chicago needs to have a significant happening on the South Side so as to let people know the city does not come to an end at Roosevelt Road and that the French were being a bit ridiculous when they issued tourist advisories to their citizens saying there’s nothing of interest down south.

TO THAT END, it is good to know that the Obama library will wind up in Jackson Park. An attraction for many people who probably will have to look up on a map to see where it is, because otherwise they just think of it as generic South Side turf.

But an Olympiad could have been a once-in-a-lifetime event. And the fact that our officials had plans how to convert all the constructed athletic facilities into something the city itself could use permanently could have reduced that factor many cities experience of expensive Olympic stadia that wind up sitting vacant in the future while their construction bills continue to be paid.

And we could have seen events of inspiration that could have helped elevate our civic mood to a point where we overcome the malaise we feel these days in Chicago.

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South Side, as anticipated, to get Obama presidential library & museum

Meh. Not even, Meh!!!!!

That’s about all the enthusiasm I can muster for the word that the long-anticipated Barack Obama presidential library and museum will, in fact, wind up being located in Chicago.

WORD CAME OUT Thursday in late afternoon. It seems that both WBBM-TV and WMAQ-TV (channels 2 and 5, for those of you who are call-letter illiterate) are trying to take credit for breaking the story that everybody else picked up on in the early evening hours, and which both the Washington Post and New York Times had in their Friday editions.

The proposal backed by the University of Chicago, where Obama once served as an instructor in the law school, is the one that the Obama Foundation will choose to be the site of his legacy museum where the National Archives also will store the official documents related to the Obama presidency.

A hard-nosed news-oriented person like myself should have been eager to report this Thursday night with an “Extra!” edition to try to indicate that I wasn’t lagging too far behind on the “News.”

Yet with all the speculation that has been reported in recent months with regards to the library, as to whether the University of Illinois at Chicago could beat out the U of C, or whether Columbia University would beat out both of them, I have become tired of the ordeal. Word could wait until today.

I’LL GET EXCITED about this project when I actually see brick and mortar being erected for the facility. As for those of you out there who have been saying a presidential library is boring because the same information could be more easily disseminated via the Internet, all I have to say is, “Pttbt.”

With my rosy, raspberry tongue pointed straight out, and bits of spit emanating from my lips!

The official announcement is to be made some time this month. I have heard the date of May 11 tossed about. The only mystery is whether the proposed Jackson Park location will beat out the Washington Park site that some people seem to think is the front runner.

In other words, will it be east, or west, of the University of Chicago campus and the famed Midway Plaissance?

PERSONALLY, I LIKE the thought of the site closer to Lake Michigan – which actually is why I preferred two other sites that once were talked about. The one that would have included a presidential library as part of a community development on the site of the former U.S. Steel Southworks plant, and the one that would have converted the site of the one-time South Shore Country Club.

The Southworks site, which I literally have stood upon a couple of times, would have provided a lakefront location with a wonderful view to the north of the downtown Chicago skyline. Instead, the area is going to get the Steelworkers Park, meant to allow people to romp around for leisure on the former steel mill site.

While I get amusement at the thought of the one-time exclusionary country club (no blacks or Jews, and my father only got inside because he worked there as a busboy when he was a teenager) becoming the site of the first African-American president’s library and museum.

I’m sure some souls will turn over in their graves, while their grandchildren are the ones who are going about complaining these days that the Obama presidency isn’t worthy of the recognition that a library and museum would give it.

ALTHOUGH I FIND it interesting that Gov. Bruce Rauner plans to sign into law the measures approved recently by the General Assembly that are meant to undermine any potential legal challenges to an Obama library/museum being placed on one-time Chicago Park District property.

I’m sure he could score political points if he were to veto the measures, although even Rauner doesn’t seem to be that ideologically motivated.

So this is an issue that hopefully can become interesting when work begins to actually build a facility – which could become one of the tourist attractions that future generations of “True Chicagoans” will feel the need to visit once. At the very least, it will ensure that the Obamas return to Chicago from their apparent future home in New York on the day of the opening festivities.

When that happens, perhaps I’ll get a little more enthused. Until then, “Meh.”

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Why does Chicago have to beg to be site of Obama presidential library?

Wednesday is the second day of hearings this week concerning proposals to transfer land to the Chicago Park District to compensate it for public parks land the city wants to offer up as the future site of the Barack Obama presidential library and museum.

Such a facility would be a significant site to bolster Chicago tourism, along with a way of memorializing the time period during which Chicago had influence over the White House and Washington-type activity.

IF ONE LOOKS at the other presidential libraries that exist in this country, one sees that it is a way in which men who work their way up to the presidency wind up acknowledging the people back home – paying tribute to the people who knew him when he was a nobody, yet voted for him anyway!

Yet Chicago is being made to beg to be the site of the future Obama facility in a way I doubt any other city has ever had to do.

I don’t doubt that the people with Columbia University who have put together a proposal to attract the museum/library to New York City have an enticing plan that would be worthy of the future facility.

Yet an Obama library and museum located in New York would be unique amongst all the other facilities – by which U.S. presidents dating back to Herbert Hoover have their legacies on display to the public.

THEY USUALLY GET located in home towns, capital cities or college towns significant to the particular president’s home state.

While I understand Barack and Michelle Obama have already said they do not plan to immediately move back to Chicago upon the completion of his presidency early in 2017, the city still has so much of a tie to Obama’s career path.

Even the President William J. Clinton library and museum got put in Little Rock, Ark., even though the former (and potentially future) first couple never returned to live there – instead preferring the New York suburbs.

But for Obama, we’re being put through a circus routine – being forced to “up our bids,” so to speak, to benefit the presidential foundation that ultimately will choose the future Obama library/museum site this spring.

WHICH IS WHY the park district had to hold hearings Tuesday and again on Wednesday to determine how to appease the people who hate the idea of park district land being used in any way for any Obama project.

It almost feels like Chicago is being extorted for more, more, more!

When it’s over, you just know many people are going to think this is some sort of political fix – as though Chicago was offered a chance to bolster its bid while interests in New York and Hawaii were being considered on the merits of their proposals made late last year.

Will we hear Columbia officials complain later this year that they would have been willing to offer more, if they had been given the chance to amend their bids?

INSOFAR AS THE desires to use sites in Jackson and Washington parks for an Obama library/museum, I’ll be the first to admit those are prominent South Side parks that are not living up to their potential.

Perhaps the future museum presence can help bolster those locations somewhat.

Although it seems like a lot of political gamesmanship Chicago has to endure – with Mayor Rahm Emanuel being put through a lot of political strain to ensure he doesn’t suffer the embarrassment of becoming the former White House chief of staff who couldn’t even keep his former boss in their shared home town.

That, most likely, is what this week’s hearings are truly all about!

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