During two public forums next week, the Chicago Park District will propose the transfer of several acres of South Side parkland to City Hall control to make way for the Obama presidential library, should the president and first lady choose the University of Chicago as the host of the complex, according to a source close to the city.
The source also said Mayor Rahm Emanuel has scrapped a University of Chicago proposal to put the library at the South Shore Cultural Center, citing the sensitivity surrounding lakefront development. It was widely expected that preservationists would sue to prevent the library moving there.
"The mayor has been clear that any development (on the lakefront) would have to increase green space and improve access, neither of which are possible on that site," the source said of the South Shore Cultural Center.
Before the community hearings, the University of Chicago is expected to unveil maps of its plans for a library in Washington Park, near the Garfield Boulevard Green Line stop, or in western Jackson Park, south of the Museum of Science and Industry, according to the source, who estimated that about 10 acres of parkland are at issue.
"The library has been very clear that the land needs to be operated by the city," the source said. "So if the community has strong support for that proposal, the mayor would like to act quickly, given the library has said there's very little time left."
The president and first lady hope to make a decision on the library's location by the end of March.
U. of C. is competing with New York's Columbia University, the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Hawaii. The contest, though, appears to be coming down to Columbia, the president's undergraduate alma mater, and U. of C., where both he and his wife worked.
At stake are hundreds of millions of dollars in transportation and other infrastructure improvements, including economic development grants, for the winning neighborhood.
"I want to make sure the city of Chicago, if there's any issues, that we resolve those so we're competitive with New York," Emanuel said. "And that this becomes an easy decision for the president to pick his hometown, where his presidential library, in my view, belongs."
There would seem to be little precedent for a transfer of parkland, although the source said the land would revert to Park District control if the museum is not built.
During planning for the city's 2016 Olympic bid, former Mayor Richard Daley planned to transfer air rights over the McCormick Place truck staging area to the city and then to the bid committee, in order to sell them and use the profits to pay for Olympic venues. But parkland was not involved.
Daley's plan called for the addition of green space by building elevated paths connecting the lakefront to the planned Olympic Village on the west side of Lake Shore Drive.
Of the two U. of C. proposals remaining, both are centered on historic parks.
Washington Park, designed by legendary landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and his partner, Calvert Vaux, is 350 acres. It was to have been the site of a temporary stadium for the 2016 Olympics.
Olmsted also laid out the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 on the other remaining U. of C. proposed site, Jackson Park. This area was the home of Daniel Burnham's famed "White City," of which only the Museum of Science and Industry remains.
The nonprofit preservation group Friends of the Parks has sued Park District officials over filmmaker George Lucas' proposed museum, planned for parking lots between Soldier Field and McCormick Place.
Last week the group wrote Barack and Michelle Obama opposing a presidential library in either park.
"We further discount that any option that involves building on existing parkland can be truly 'park-positive,' even if it was accompanied by the demolition of existing park buildings or the replacement of newly acquired parkland ... elsewhere, particularly when the design of a historic park is being negatively impacted," the letter stated.
The Park District's meetings will take place at 6 p.m. Jan. 13 at Hyde Park Academy High School and at noon Jan. 14 at Washington Park Field House.
Twitter @chiconfidential