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Originally Posted by moorhosj
For consistency, I assume you don't refer to Lincoln Park or Millennium Park as parks as they each contain buildings and non-open spaces. Grant Park has Buckingham Fountain, which isn't open land or open space, but a fountain. Humboldt Park has a boathouse, a field house and the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture. Jackson Park has a golf course you must pay to use and MSI.
Do you consider Cornell Drive to be open land, open space? This pearl-clutching argument doesn't stand up to reality. The greatest parks in the world have structures and programming along with open spaces.
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You are being ridiculous now. The Obama center is going to create open land on top of structures as well as around them. Presumably, security will patrol/control this property in ways that the surrounding Jackson Park is not patrolled/controlled. Millennium Park is by no means open space, you can't even walk your dog there. Lincoln Park is a giant public park spanning most of the north lakefront and is interrupted with structures both public and quasi-public, but we certainly wouldn't want it to be further interrupted with additional structures.
Point blank, the Obama Presidential Library Organization has plenty of resources to develop the project on private land. There is no need to put this facility on public land.
What happens in the next hundred years when there are 8 more presidents from Chicago? Are we to give up further limited public lands for said presidents' libraries? Where does it stop? That is why Friends of the Parks sues now and with Lucas and will sue again and again if need be. They are advocates for the public land. The land that was designated to stay free and clear and for all Chicago's citizens.