President Barack Obama has selected the University of Chicago to host his library and museum, sources have told the Chicago Tribune.
Despite a flurry of reports Thursday that Chicago had won the library, there was no official confirmation by the Obama administration, City Hall or the Obama Foundation, which is leading the site selection process.
There are two potential sites under considerstion, both in the crime-ridden South Side of the city, currently home to a horrific crime wave costing the lives of many young minorities.
Sources said it remained unclear whether a decision had been made on which South Side park to build the library -- Washington Park or Jackson Park.
I recommend Highland Park, somewhere within walking distance of Beth El. They seemed to have voted for him twice. The traffic and constant reminder might be good therapy.
But taking the parkland is questionable, and likely to be fought in court by the group Friends of the Parks, so the State Legislature has passed a special law:
State lawmakers attempted to head off further legal wrangling over whether the library could be built on public land last week, when legislation aimed at providing legal protections for the library was quickly passed.
Friends of the Parks, which already has filed a federal lawsuit challenging plans for a proposed Lucas Museum of Narrative Art on parkland, has been the chief opposition to building the Obama library on parkland.
The estimated half-billion-dollar monument is regarded as an economic benefit to the impoverished community in which it will reside. We'll see. The University of Chicago, which conferred academic status on Obama as a scholar, though he never wrote anything of a scholarly nature, and which employed his wife as an executive in charge of diverting poor, money-losing patients away from its hospitals, is taking a starring role in the library project.
As for Obama, his Chicago years are largely over, and Manhattan beckons as the home of movers and shakers:
Sources said Obama's offices could be built in West Harlem, on land offered by Columbia University, the U. of C.'s chief competitor for the library. However, it was unclear whether the president had made a final decision. That announcement is expected to come later.