Emanuel's 'Consensus Building' Is Disingenuous
By Chuck Sudo in News on Jan 21, 2015 9:30PM
This was the headline to a story in Monday’s Tribune: “Emanuel looks to build consensus on Obama Library.”
Emanuel said Friday, "I'm going to make sure all questions are eliminated so that the president and the foundation can make the right decision, putting the library here in the city of Chicago." We’ll assume that consensus will also entail the response of people who attended the two public hearings held last week to discuss Emanuel’s plan to give U of C over 20 acres of parkland to make the university’s bid for the Obama Presidential Library more attractive. Reports from those meetings were that the majority of residents who attended favored having the library in Chicago, while there was minor opposition from folks who don’t want to see public land used for the project.
For Emanuel, this was just the latest in an ongoing pattern of gauging public support after he announces something his administration is going to do anyway. He'll almost certainly do this with the city’s plans to lease lakefront land to the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art for $1 a year, if Friends of the Parks’ lawsuit over the plan drags on in the courts for an extended length of time. And he’s doing it now with the Obama Library.
Smartly, he lets emotional public sentiment justify his decisions after the fact. People who oppose the Lucas Museum being built on the lakefront are met with scathing rebukes of “why are these morons protecting a parking lot?” The current argument over the Obama Library is “why shouldn’t we give up parkland? We have enough of it.”
In both cases (and we’ve noted this several times) the argument is over who gets to dictate how public land is developed. The Lucas Museum site may currently be a parking lot, but it is public land first and foremost. U of C’s Obama Library bid was in serious jeopardy because the university didn’t own any of the land in its two proposed sites. Emanuel swoops in with deus ex machina moves and all is right with his world.
If the mayor truly wanted to build consensus, why not hold meetings asking for public input? The Michael Reese Hospital site is still empty, years after Chicago had its heart broken by the International Olympic Committee. That would be a great spot for the Lucas Museum, with clear views of the lakefront and, with easy access to public transit, it has a leg up on the parking lot.
And why isn’t North Lawndale being seriously discussed as a spot for the Obama Library? A proposal by the University of Illinois at Chicago is one of four finalists to land the library and has 23 acres of vacant city-owned land tied to one of its two sites, but it's considered an also-ran to U of C's bid.
North Lawndale would make as much sense as Woodlawn to land the library and arguably has equal, if not greater, historic and social impact: Dr. Martin Luther King used the neighborhood as his home base protesting unfair housing practices for blacks in Chicago nearly a half-century prior. Placing the library in North Lawndale would tie it to the MLK Historic District in the neighborhood and spur the same economic growth U of C hopes to bring to Woodlawn with its bid.
Emanuel said when he took office he would work with people. Instead, what we’ve gotten is more of the same “His Elective Majesty” nonsense that preceded him. Emanuel has repeatedly said, "I didn't get elected to be liked, I got elected to solve problems." (While his record on the latter is open to debate, his approval ratings reflect the former.)
But people aren’t opposing the Lucas Museum and Obama Library bid because they don’t want them in Chicago. They’re opposing “my way or the highway” politics.