Obama Foundation formally announces library’s Chicago site

CHICAGO — The Obama Foundation formally announced Friday that Chicago’s Jackson Park will be home to Barack Obama’s presidential library.

“Michelle and I are thrilled that the Obama Presidential Center will be developed in the heart of Chicago’s South Side, a community we call home and that means the world to us,” the president said in a statement. “With a centre in Jackson Park, not only will we be able to affect local change, but we can attract the world to this historic neighbourhood, whose rich cultural heritage dates back to the 1893 World’s Fair.”

The location, near the Museum of Science and Industry, beat an alternative site about a mile west in Washington Park. It’s also about 2 miles from the Obamas’ residence in the Hyde Park neighbourhood.

Both park locations, which were designed by noted landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, were chosen as finalists last year over bids by Columbia University in New York City, the University of Hawaii and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The foundation said Obama believed Jackson Park would have the greatest long-term impact.

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The announcement confirmed the location that was revealed earlier this week to The Associated Press by a person familiar with the selection process who spoke on condition of anonymity because the individual wasn’t authorized to discuss the choice.

The Obamas announced last month that the library would be designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, a New York architectural firm that designed the David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago.

The complex in Jackson Park, which will contain the 44th president’s library, archives and foundation headquarters, is expected to be completed by 2021.

The Associated Press