The former president and first lady came to Chicago to unveil plans for the Obama Presidential Center, saying it would be a different kind of presidential library.
CHICAGO — Barack Obama has seen presidential libraries. Sometimes they are a monument to the past, he said, standing on stage in an auditorium on Wednesday; a record of accomplishments. “And a little bit of an ego trip, ” he added. “ ‘See what I did.’ ”
Mr. Obama and the former first lady, Michelle Obama, returned for a day to the city they call home to unveil renderings of the Obama Presidential Center, a modern, stone-and-glass complex on Lake Michigan that they said would be a different kind of presidential library. Speaking to several hundred people on the city’s South Side, Mr. Obama, who was tieless and in a jovial mood, said that the center could be “a transformational project for this community.”
“The main thing that Michelle and I contributed was just saying, ‘What is it that we want to see 10 years from now?’ ” he said, recounting his conversations with the architects who designed the center. “And we don’ t want to see some big building that’s dead, and kids are getting dragged to it for a field trip. What we wanted was something that was alive, and that was a hub for the community and for the city and for the country.”
It was the second time in 10 days that Mr. Obama had come to Chicago, as he has begun to emerge in public after the end of his presidency. He spent the weeks after the January inauguration of President Trump vacationing in Palm Springs, the British Virgin Islands and French Polynesia; on Sunday, he is scheduled to appear in Boston to accept the Profile in Courage Award from the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation.
The Obama center could be one of the biggest projects ever developed on the South Side, at a cost of at least $500 million. Expected to be completed in 2021, it will be located in Jackson Park, a space designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. The 500-acre, lakefront park already includes the Museum of Science and Industry, a beach, golf courses and athletic facilities.
Mr. Obama said he wanted his library to include a children’s play area that would attract families from the neighborhood, and a community garden for schoolchildren. He said he wanted food trucks and some grills so people can barbecue, prompting chuckles from the crowd.
“Why are you laughing?” he asked. “We don’ t have any folks who grill here? I thought this was the South Side of Chicago!”
Because Mrs. Obama lamented that Jackson Park did not have hills when she was a child growing up in the nearby South Shore neighborhood, Mr. Obama said the presidential center would be outfitted with a sledding hill.
Mr. Obama said he envisioned “a studio where I can invite Spike Lee and Steven Spielberg to do workshops on how to make films, ” and “a recording studio where I could invite Chance or Bruce Springsteen, depending on your tastes, to talk about how you could record music that has social commentary and meaning.”
“What we want this to be is the world’s premiere institution for training young people in leadership to make a difference in their countries, in their communities and in the world, ” he said.
Mr. Obama was joined on stage by Dina Griffin, a Chicagoan and one of the architects of the center. Last year, he chose Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, a husband-and-wife architectural team based in New York, to design the library and to work with Ms. Griffin. Ms. Tsien’s and Mr. Williams’s work includes the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago and the Barnes Foundation museum in Philadelphia.
The attendees on Wednesday were a who’s who of Chicago civic life, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a former chief of staff in the Obama White House; Valerie Jarrett, a close friend and presidential adviser; and Kim Foxx, the state’s attorney for Cook County. Mr. Obama made the announcement at the South Shore Cultural Center, a landmark building where he and Mrs. Obama held their wedding reception in 1992.
Many of them said they were thrilled that the Obamas had chosen the South Side of Chicago for the presidential center. “I think we really need the Obamas right now, ” said Delois Martin, 67. “This could give kids a place to go, and hopefully it’ ll help with all the violence we have here.”
But the project has also brought fears of crowds and traffic, and of rapid development in Woodlawn that could make the neighborhood unaffordable for some of the current residents.
The Rev. Corey Brooks, the pastor of a church in Woodlawn, said he has already seen signs of development near the library site.
“I think that it could possibly bring a lot of hope to the community, ” he said. “I would also hope that the library would not gentrify the community.”
