Obama chooses Chicago for presidential library

Presidents' library legacy President Barack Obama has chosen the south side of Chicago as the site for his presidential library, ending more than a year of jockeying between the Windy City, New York and his birthplace, Hawaii, to win the prestige project.

Backers of the bid, affiliated to the University of Chicago, estimated the library could bring at least $220m in annual economic activity to a rundown area that has seen little development. The library itself is expected to cost about $500m to build.

The south side has played an important role in African-American history and in the lives of Mr Obama, who began his career there, and his wife, Michelle, who grew up there. The library will serve as a monument to Mr Obama's presidency and, like those of George W Bush in Dallas and Bill Clinton in Little Rock, Arkansas, house artefacts, papers and exhibitions relating to his years in office.

Mr Obama's foundation did not announce which of two neighbourhoods near the university campus will be chosen.

Washington Park has an unemployment rate of 23 per cent and Woodlawn 17 per cent, compared with 11 per cent for the city overall. Struggling with high levels of violent crime, Washington Park is among the most impoverished parts of the city.

The selection "will allow economic development to begin where it needs to on the south side of Chicago", said Dick Simpson, a professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago and a former city alderman.

He said the library "brings a massive addition of tourists and a certain amount national and international prestige, all of which is important to Chicago".<

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The choice of the site marks a victory for Rahm Emanuel, Chicago's mayor and a former chief of staff to Mr Obama, who had said he would "move heaven and earth" to bring the library to the city. Instead, he had to move a typically deferential city council to approve the use of municipal parkland for the site over the objections of some vocal people.

In securing the library, Mr Emanuel avoided what an embarrassing defeat. It also provides him with some cover from criticism that his administration has focused resources on the prosperous, predominantly white north side and downtown districts, while ignoring the majority black and Hispanic south and west sides.

Chicago had long been seen as the leading - if not inevitable - choice for the Obamas. But reports earlier this year suggested that it might lose out to New York because it had not yet secured the parkland on which the library might sit.

That set off a mad dash to pass the necessary bills at city and state level, and an existential crisis as the Second City - so nicknamed in the 1950s by New Yorker writer AJ Liebling - as it contemplated losing out once again to New York.

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