I am very excited for this project and the economic catalyst it will be for that area. I am excited to see Cornell Drive taken out, but I am wondering what will the alternate route be? Will Stony Island be widened?

^ Yes, Stony will be widened. Instead of turning off at 57th, traffic from Lake Shore Drive will be directed to stay on LSD further south to Hayes then cut over to Stony. Hayes will be rebuilt similar to LaSalle thru Lincoln Park, with underpasses for pedestrians.

So the turnoff at 57th will be just for the MSI and local traffic. That's good.

Is Tiger Woods' Golf Course design company still planning the Jackason Park/South Shore golf course restoration? I've been wondering if they've been waiting for the Obama Presidential Center to get the go ahead.

I got to image the combo of a PGA level Tiger Woods golf coarse and the Obama Presidential Center will pretty transformative and drive some other development in the area.

I admittedly haven't followed the OPL thread super close over the years but am stoked it's finally coming together. I am curious though, what exactly is the point to closing off 57th like they are planning? I don't really get what that has to do with the library.

They're not closing 57th, they're closing Cornell. If you exit LSD at 57th, you won't be able to zoom around MSI onto Cornell like now. You'll have to sit at a stoplight at the Midway/5900S and turn left onto Stony Island, and then sit through 4 additional stoplights in front of the Obama Center and Hyde Park Academy and a stop sign at 64th before getting to the "superhighway" part of Stony south of Marquette. So you can still exit at 57th to go south, it'll just be a lot slower to go that way than to take the new route via Hayes. More importantly, the new widened Stony Island will have full curb bumpouts, landscaped median, signalized crosswalks etc so it is friendly for pedestrians to cross and access the whole of the park.

What keeps getting forgotten here is that all the roadway changes south of Hayes are not for the Obama Center, but for the privatized mega-golf course that the Park District is planning. Somehow the golf course has not riled up activists because it's not a building, even though it's far more of a problem for gentrification than the Obama Center is. The course that they're building is intended to be expensive and exclusive, unlike the public courses that exist now.

https://i.imgur.com/sUcRq5u.jpg

Ah okay I see it now, thanks for the visual.

In an alternate reality, I imagine a Chicago where the organizers of the 1893 World's Columbian Expo spent a little more money and made permanent buildings instead, and all of that evolved to become the location of the UN instead of NYC. Imagine visiting that today..

I outlined the serious problems with the golf plan above, but yeah this is basically dependent on the OPC.

The golf course plan can't move forward without the roadwork for the OPC that will close certain roads and build underpasses at other roads for pedestrians (and golf carts). After this infrastructure is built, it will allow the joining of the various courses that currently exist.

Yes please.

I'm not seeing how the roadwork plans help join Jackson Park Golf Course with South Shore Golf Course...

Keep in mind that Chicago offered Northerly Island as the home of the UN. Surprisingly, they decided not to spend their winters out in Lake Michigan downwind of the stockyards.

Leaving aside the problem of travel time to Chicago in a pre-jetliner era, Charlene Mires writes in Capital of the World: The Race to Host the United Nations that the site selection committee summarily ruled out all Midwestern locations because of the famous isolationism of the region's newspapers. Obviously, Col. McCormick's Tribune was leader of the pack, having been a loud, steadfast, and influential opponent of US involvement in World War II.

https://i.imgur.com/RgrrnvP.png

The Chicago Tribune, always on the wrong side of history:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/resiz...VA77N4QPJGMKJM

News came through that the Obama Presidential Center will break ground by late summer this year!

https://chicagoyimby.com/2021/02/oba...kson-park.html

Dang I preferred the previous design.

Really?? I think it looked weird, like some sort of ancient Egyptian mastaba:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/architectur...library-02.jpg

https://www.architecture.org/news/ev...ential-center/

The current/final design is more refined, and not as fortress-like:

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Ot0k..._2_Plaza.0.jpg

In the final design what is written out on the top left? Is it gibberish

It's just filler gibberish in the rendering of course. It will likely be the Preamble to the Constitution or another such inscription of great national significance.

Part of me hopes that wires get crossed somewhere and we end up with giant stone letters spelling out "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..."

I always thought that was called jabberwocky for some reason. Maybe that was just my professors name for it.

I like it. Its like something out of Ancient Aliens. Its unique. :D

The final text used will be from an Obama Speech that has yet to be chosen.

Less Lime Kilnesque...

Do not like, needs girant wooden braces encircling the top...

Whatever ends up happening with those letters, no denying that the building + site plan is elegant and will be a fantastic asset to Jackson Park and the city. Can't wait to see this become reality.

Why is there no denying that?

Feel free to disagree!

This new iteration is definitely more elegant. I'm still not 100% sold on the overall design, but I'm sure it's one of those things that will grow on me.

Street removal in Jackson Park is still my favorite part of this whole project. A lot of our other parks need to undergo this as well.

I liked it. :shrug:

It looks like a mess to me now.

Tikal

Agreed. Garfield through Washington Park isn't great. Realistically it should probably get a couple of underpasses. The weird leg of Damen thru McKinley Park sucks too.

Jackson Park's status quo is sadly actually better than many parks... Washington Park has terrible pedestrian connectivity (and bicycle connectivity too). There is literally no safe way to cross from the North Side to the South Side of the park without going to the East or West edge. And don't get me started on the flooding issues...

And every time I walk or Divvy between the Garfield Green Line to the UC Campus, this intersection is super hairy. There's not even a signed crosswalk across Morgan Dr (not that it would help much).

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.7912...7i16384!8i8192

[/rant]

Even while driving, try turning left here. I say a prayer every time.

Next time try it on a bike :)

Oh God, I know exactly where that is - it is legit terrifying

The sad thing is how totally unnecessary that leg is. Doesn't do a better job of getting you to Pershing than the regular 2000W length of Damen. And both Damen's end at Pershing anyway due to the railyard.

Hopefully one day the city can budget some money to giving the parks road diets. Really, just closing many of them to traffic would be fine. Turn them to bike paths/pedestrian walkways. Shouldn't cost all that much. :shrug:

I believe the Damen layout at McKinley Park is a a remnant of the old Damen viaduct that went down to 47th. Shame they've never tried to fix it in the decades since the viaduct came down.

My dream for the boulevards is that they become something like the parkway system in Minneapolis and St Paul. A lot of the boulevards are not major streets and would be really nice if they were limited to one lane each way and a design that kept cars down to 20-25 mph max.

Wow, never knew about that Damen viaduct but I wondered about the weird bit of Damen north of 47th. Crazy that they tore it down, but even shittier that they tore it down without restoring McKinley Park.

Removing any links in the grid just makes other parts of the grid into even worse auto sewers - in this case Western and Ashland which are god-awful drag strips. I assume removing the viaduct also meant removing the bus line, so McKinley Park and Back of the Yards became much less transit-friendly as a result.

Garfield/55th should really be a major BRT line connecting Hyde Park and Midway - there's plenty of room for dedicated bus lanes on the boulevard.

The 48 South Damen bus has been rush hour service only for decades. When the viaduct was condemned in March 2000, the bus was rerouted via Damen-Pershing-Western Blvd.-47th-Damen to 35th/Archer Orange Line. In late 2008, that was truncated to Western Orange Line.

The X55 operated as a demonstration project, paid for with special federal money, on Garfield and 55th from June 2002 until Feb 2010.

https://twitter.com/MichelleObama/st...694128641?s=20


"You are America" will be the lettering on the outside of the building

The full text is: "You are America. Unconstrained by habit and convention. Unencumbered by what is, ready to seize what ought to be. For everywhere in this country, there are first steps to be taken, there is new ground to cover, there are more bridges to be crossed. America is not the project of any one person. The single most powerful word in our democracy is the word ‘We.’ ‘We The People.’ ‘We Shall Overcome.’ ‘Yes We Can.’ That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a glorious task we are given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours."

https://www.obama.org/the-center/ext...veal_OPCAFFCHI

The video is very nice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBTFbK8bMJQ

Lovely.

Does anyone know how long they anticipate this entire thing to take? Very curious about timetables, phases, etc.

With $847 million raised, mid-fall groundbreaking set for Obama Center
 

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/greg...t-obama-center

I was just wondering when they expect to finish and open assuming construction actually begins by later this year "definitely before winter."

There's underground parking so I would expect 2-2.5 years? That's about how long the MSI garage project took back in the 90s. All that underground work takes a long time and has to be completed before the building can start rising (barring some kind of top-down method like OCS). Expect to see a slurry wall bathtub.

Actually I looked at the PD again and it's not as extensive as I thought. There's only one underground level and it's not that deep, around 15'... they can probably just dig a big pit and backfill it when they're done.

I'm not sure about the roadwork project which is totally separate and being managed by IDOT.

The article says that the center should be open in four years. They were saying that in the context of Mr. and Mrs. Obama being in Chicago more frequently during the next four years as the center is built and then opens.

4 years? I swear, construction gets slower and more expensive every year.

Maybe they're gonna "groundbreak" in the fall but wait until IDOT finishes all the roadwork before they can close Cornell and start construction on the building?

The Obama's wasted a lot of years by insisting on the site that they knew would be tied up in courts and appeals. Now it may not be done until after two subsequent administrations come and go.

Open in 4 years doesn't mean the actual construction is going to take 4 years. I imagine that with a lot of materials for example for the center itself, it will take a long time to even get those moved in and in order before it can be opened. I'm sure there's a lot of other considerations like that.

There are new landscaping and outdoor things too, which I assume cannot all realistically be done year round. Im.curious how long the main building itself will take to build. Can't be more than 1.5 years can it?

Reminds of me the library here in Long Island City (NYC) which was under construction technically for YEARS before opening less than 1.5 years ago finally.

Seems worth it considering this is the far superior site?