They used to lead the fight to protect Chicago’s precious lakefront from invasions, like the Obama Center.

No more. Today’s Chicago progressives, a.k.a. lakefront or limousine liberals, once were the first line of defense against any degradation of the city’s lakefront.

The idea that the lakefront is sacred and should be “forever open, free and clear” is in the city’s DNA. It’s been like that for more than a century and any perceived threat would rally progressives.

They successfully fought to evict the private Lincoln Park Gun Club that closed three acres of the lakefront to park users. They regularly battled developers’ plans in the City Council, before judges and in the court of public opinion. They allied themselves with the city’s preservation groups that were the gold standard for what was right and good in Chicago.

Not that they always won, but they never went silently. An example is the hulking McCormick Place lakefront convention center that remains stuck in their claws.

Other times they were successful. The most recent example was their blocking the gawd-awful lakefront monument near Soldier Field to filmmaker George Lucas’ ego. Decades earlier, they chained themselves to Jackson Park trees to block planned road extensions that would have ruined the historic park’s ambiance.

But where have they gone now that former President Barack Obama is building probably the greatest monstrosity to ever sully the lakefront: His soaring 235-foot-tall Presidential “Center?”

Their silence, or their surprising and disappointing support of the $500-million project, puts them now on the side of special interests, big money, machine clout, the Chicago Way and all the other anti-democratic scheming and alliances that have made the city the template for corruption and insider-dealing.

But–don’t you see?–it’s to celebrate the legacy of America’s first black president, not far from his Kenwood mansion?!!! (When was the last time he was there?) Chicago is his “hometown,” so think of all the good things that he’s gifting to the city. Even though all those good things would still be available if he had accepted a more useful, reasonable and beneficial site nearby on available land in an actual neighborhood that’s pleading for rescue.

How shameful is it that most of their successes have been on the predominantly white and prosperous North Side, but they so quickly put aside their preservation principles when the fight is on the mostly-black, poverty-stricken South Side. Racism you say?

Notice, too, that all those bureaucratic checks and balances that were created to protect the environment and to pursue social justice that progressives have successfully installed have been and are being ignored by their advocates. Shameful, yes.

Consider also, that it’s taking a loathsome conservative (me), to speak up for the preservation ethic while its traditional defenders have shut up because they won’t battle the power structure or are so overwhelmed by their adoration of Obama that they have joined the other side. Double shame.

The project is back in the news because the main opponents of the center, Protect our Parks, haven’t given up their court battle. A hearing is scheduled Tuesday to weigh their solid arguments that the project should be relocated somewhere outside of the historic park.

The group’s previous legal challenges--all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court--haven’t been successful, even though the Center violates so many regulations and laws.

But more than a legal fight, this is a fight for Chicago uniqueness. For the one enduring thing–the lakefront–that makes Chicagoans proud. Beyond a legal and public policy fight, it is a moral one for the city’s soul.

Below is a previous column I wrote outlining my objections to the Jackson Park site:

The Obama Center’s rape of Chicago’s lakefront

By Dennis Byrne, June 12, 2019 at 11:30 am

As a life-long Chicagoan, I never imagined that I’d see anyone get away with building skyscraper in one of the city’s precious lakefront parks.

Worse, I never thought that the news of the scarring of a lakefront park would be greeted with such a chorus of cheers by so many people who should delight in and brag about Chicago’s beautiful lakefront, unsullied as it is by the ugly, invasive, unwanted and discordant.

So it was with the news that U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey waved away a century of law and tradition protecting the lakefront and with surprising speed dismissed a lawsuit that challenged the construction of the Obama Center in historic Jackson Park.

Essentially, Blakey ruled that it wasn’t up to him, a judge, to decide the issue, but that he had to follow legislative intent. (I wish all Obama-appointed judges like Blakey were as respectful of the law.) But that’s where Blakey was wrong.  It was clearly the intent of  past Chicago and Illinois legislative bodies that the lakefront should be protected from such horrors. Instead Blakey ignored the history and relied upon the more recent legislative knee-bending to powerful Obama lickspittles to reverse the Lakefront Protection Ordinance and the time-honored principle that the lakefront should be “forever open, clear and free.”

(For the forgetful, newcomers and people who just don’t give a damn about the principle, I highly recommend Lois Wille’s important book, Forever Open, Clear, and Free: The Struggle for Chicago’s Lakefront.”)*

The center’s  tower will soar some 235 feet into the sky, a height that overwhelms and darkens the park. To get an idea of just how out-of-place the building is, imagine if  the 17-story, 215-foot-tall Monadnock Building had been built  in Jackson Park, rising above the trees and blocking the views. I’ve described the tower as resembling a menhir, with its stark, stoney face, entirely inappropriate for a park-setting and violating any concept of human scale.

In an email to me, Herbert L. Caplan of Protect our Parks, the group that filed the suit against the center’s location in Jackson Park, succinctly described the objections: 

 “The issues were not complicated:

“(1) Jackson Park is unique and world famous as a distinguished public park;

“(2) The proposed Obama Center is a private entity not an official NARA [National Archives and RecordsAdministration] administered Presidential Library as originally promised;

“(3) the proposed Obama Center is not a museum of either art (Art Institute), science  (Field Museum; Adler Planetarium; Shedd Aquarium) or industry (Museum of Science and Industry) as detailed in the Aquarium and Museum Act;

“(4) The Park District Code expressly prohibits the Chicago Park District  from transferring and gifting dedicated public park land to a private entity for a private use;

“(5) there is no compelling reason for building an Obama Center in Jackson Park instead of in one of the available underserved south side neighborhoods in need of new investment and development;

“(6) the proposed Obama Center will only serve the personal, private, and political objectives of the former President, in violation of the United States and Illinois Constitutions;

“(7)  The construction of an Obama Center in Jackson Park does not serve the public interest and violates the public trust.”

The impact of Blakey’s decision could be far-reaching, Caplan said:

“The consequence of Blakey’s opinion is to create a new precedent and suddenly remove all existing legal restrictions to open up the entire heretofore carefully protected lakefront public park system to piecemeal destructive exploitation; and welcome neo-commercial development in its place. This is the biggest land giveaway since the Canarsie Indians gave Manhattan to the Dutch for a handful of beads.”

*Here’s how Wille’s book  is described on Amazon:

“Of the thirty miles of Lake Michigan shoreline within the city 

limits of Chicago, twenty-four miles is public park land. The crown jewels of its park system, the lakefront parks bewitch natives and visitors alike with their brisk winds, shady trees, sandy beaches, and rolling waves. Like most good things, the protection of the lakefront parks didn’t come easy, and this book chronicles the hard-fought and never-ending battles Chicago citizens have waged to keep them “forever open, clear, and free.”

 Ironically, the publisher is the University of Chicago Press. The University of Chicago is part of the power structure that is behind the rape of Jackson Park.

Related: Trees and Trust Felled in Chicago’s Jackson Park

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