The Case for the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park

Eight months after former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama revealed their vision for the Obama Presidential Center (OPC) in Jackson Park, on the south side of Chicago, the Obama Foundation has released more detailed plans and designs, which they say are the result of thousands of comments. The new plans are perhaps also a response to criticism that the Presidential Center “confiscates” some 19 acres of the historic, Olmsted-designed 543-acre Jackson Park, and, therefore, a parking structure planned for the nearby Midway Plaisance would further undermine the park’s integrity. The Obama Foundation has since scrapped plans for the parking structure in favor of adding parking underneath the Center.

Amid new calls by park advocates and a faculty group at the University of Chicago to move the Presidential Center out of Jackson Park, the design team — which is led by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and includes Interactive Design Architects (IDEA), Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA), Site Design Group, and Living Habitats — continues to move through the process, honing the plans and designs, with the goal of building the $500-million project by 2021.

Michael Van Valkenburgh, FASLA, lead landscape architect on the project, told us criticism that the Obama Presidential Center destroys the landscape designed by Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. is incorrect. “There is a complete failure to recognize the history of the 19 acres in question, particularly with respect to Olmsted and Vaux. The Jackson Park — as designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. and Calvert Vaux — was never actually fully realized. Then, the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition came in, and Jackson Park was nearly destroyed. The design evolved with guidance from Olmsted Sr., but not Vaux. One of Olmsted’s successor firms, headed up by his sons, created a revised plan for the park in 1895, the same year FLO Sr. retired from practice. Olmsted Sr. kept the lagoons intact as did the sons in the 1895 plan. Many of FLO Sr’s big ideas persist in that version of Jackson Park, but given the history, you have to be misguided to argue the landscape between Cornell Drive and Stony Island Avenue is in any way an intact Olmsted Sr. landscape. Or that its current configuration and character is fundamental to our ability to appreciate Olmsted Sr’s. vision for a very large, very watery park.”

Jackson Park aerial view / Chicago Construction News

Furthermore, Van Valkenburgh argued, the Obama Foundation’s plans will yield usable new landscape. “With the new Presidential Center, we will remove the 6-lane Cornell Drive, which, today, horrendously cuts off part of the park where the OPC is proposed, leaving it as an isolated triangle. The removal of Cornell Drive is a major restoration of the 1895 plan— and makes connections through Jackson Park towards the adjacent Lagoon and on to Lake Michigan. Also, the OPC will create accessible new park land, as part of the MVVA site strategy that embeds two of the new buildings entirely under new landscape on the east and south sides towards Jackson Park.” The design team contends there will be a net-gain in park land.

Cornell Drive and proposed site of Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park / The Chicago Tribune

Van Valkenburgh believes the landscape design realizes the goals of the Obamas: to make the Center as green and open as possible, so the entire experience feels like an urban public park. “Again, the organizing idea was to cluster the three Center buildings and embed two of them in park land, so we can keep the amount of paved surfaces to under a couple of acres.”

Obama Presidential Center embedded in the landscape / Obama Foundation, DBOX

The Obama Foundation and the design team want to create a new woodland walk, sledding hill, playground, athletic center, lawns, and community vegetable garden for school kids to grow and eat fresh produce. The garden helps continue “Mrs. Obama’s mission of food and wellness.” These new features are set within a landscape designed to sustainably manage water.

Woodland Walk / Obama Foundation, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates
Sledding hill / Obama Foundation, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates
Playground / Obama Foundation, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates

“The Obamas were married in the park. And they lived a few blocks away from it for years. They are committed to opening up the Center into the civic and public realm.”

For more perspective, read the take of Blair Kamin, The Chicago Tribune‘s architecture critic, who largely supports the approach of the design team, but calls for the designs to further evolve, that of Jackson Park Watch, which calls for slower and more comprehensive planning with deeper community involvement, and that of Charles Birnbaum, FASLA, president of The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), who calls for moving the Center out of the park (and also disagrees with Kamin). Lastly, read more on demands that the Obama Foundation sign a community benefits agreement, which they have so far refused to do.

To Become More Resilient, Boston Takes a “Landscape First” Approach

East Boston flood scenarios / Coastal Resilience Solutions for East Boston and Charlestown, Stoss

Instead of simply responding to catastrophe, Boston is getting out front on climate change. As part of its Climate Ready Boston plan, the city of 670,000 aims to act fast and protect two coastal neighborhoods most vulnerable to rising sea levels and storms: East Boston and Charlestown. New plans for these neighborhoods explain how a simple fix like creating a temporary flood wall at the coastal end of the East Boston Greenway, at a cost of just $100,000, would protect 4,300 residents, 70 businesses and critical infrastructure, and result in $17 million in benefits.

But perhaps the most important statement in the plan is: “more extensive measures combining green and gray infrastructure and new open space can be built and expanded over time to address risks from 1 percent annual chance floods with over 36 inches of sea level rise (by the 2070s).” In other words, landscape-based solutions are the answer for long-term protection and resilience. The plan calls for making $142-262 million of these investments over the next few decades, netting $644-751 million in benefits.

East Boston plan, near and long-term projects / Coastal Resilience Solutions for East Boston and Charlestown, Stoss
Charlestown plan, near and long-term projects / Coastal Resilience Solutions for East Boston and Charlestown, Stoss

An inter-departmental city government team lead the effort, which was conducted by engineers at Kleinfelder, landscape architects at Stoss landscape urbanism, and architects with ONE architecture. The district-level coastal resilience plan came out of the recently-completed Climate Ready Boston process and Imagine Boston 2030, the first comprehensive planning effort in 50 years, and resulted from the efforts of Boston Harbor Now and other non-profits.

In a phone interview, Chris Reed, ASLA, founder and principal at Stoss landscape urbanism, said East Boston and Charlestown were the focus of the first plans and conceptual designs in a series that will look at all vulnerable Boston neighborhoods. “The rationale was to look at the places that will flood first and also help disadvantaged neighborhoods threatened with displacement and gentrification.” An analysis of South Boston, including Seaport, is also underway, and more neighborhood analyses will be coming over the next few years.

Reed explained that Kleinfelder, Stoss, and ONE only proposed “flood control measures that have social, environmental, and economic benefits.” Flood control infrastructure takes the form of landscape berms, wildlife habitat, waterfront promenades, play areas, and strategic walls. Using evaluation criteria established in the report, the planning and design team settled on a layered approach with back-up defenses. In most instances, walls were minimized in favor of other kinds of multi-use infrastructure that enable access to and recreation on the waterfronts.

East Boston landing: a landscape-first approach / Coastal Resilience Solutions for East Boston and Charlestown, Stoss
Ryan playground in Charlestown / Coastal Resilience Solutions for East Boston and Charlestown, Stoss

The team also crafted a “development toolkit,” with new regulations to guide private developers and better leverage public-private infrastructure investments. For example, currently, new developments on the waterfront must have 50 percent open space. Reed explained that through new regulations, these open spaces can be better coordinated to maximize resilience. “The city can now gang up and locate protective open spaces strategically.” With the toolkit, the city can also now move beyond a “site by site approach” and scale up its resilient development efforts.

Recommendations are rooted in different flooding scenarios. Reed said the tricky part was “you can have a storm surge on top of sea level rise.” Instead of using outdated FEMA data, Boston is basing its analyses in dynamic models created by Woods Hole Group, University of Massachusetts Boston, and the Barr Foundation. Models project out to 2070, but purposefully stop there. “We just can’t project to 2100.”

Reed said funds have already been allocated to projects, including the coastal end of the East Boston Greenway and raising Border Street. But it’s not clear how Boston will pay for the billions it may actually need to spend on resilience, when all neighborhood analyses are said and done.

What is clear to Reed is that “there is an absolute need to address climate change.” And in our new age of resilience, what’s needed is a “landscape first strategy for city-making.”

In fact, Reed thinks these district-scale resilience plans return us to the era of Frederick Law Olmsted, when landscape served as a basis for urban planning. “People are re-discovering cities are part of the environment and impacted by nature and temperature change.”

Read the executive summary or full report (large PDF).