Presidential Attics

By Ruth Eckdish Knack, AICP

The prospect of a new attraction — a library dedicated to President Barack Obama — has created a buzz in three cities: New York, Honolulu, and Chicago. In all three, private groups have mobilized to make a case to the president and the first lady, Michelle Obama, for locating the presidential library and museum there.

Chicago may have an edge. It's where the president worked as a community organizer on the far South Side and where he taught at the University of Chicago law school. He met his wife while interning at a downtown law firm and bought a house in the Hyde Park neighborhood not far from the university. His two daughters were born in the university hospital, where Michelle Obama was an administrator.

New York's Columbia University is where the president spent his last two years of college — and, according to David Maraniss's biography, struggled into adulthood. Honolulu is, of course, his birthplace, where he lived with his grandparents while attending the prestigious Punahou School.

The selection process is being organized by the Barack Obama Presidential Foundation, which is headed by Martin Nesbitt, a longtime friend of the president. Last March, the foundation released a request for qualifications from interested parties. In the words of the RFQ, the foundation is "seeking to build a facility that will cultivate a strong relationship with the surrounding community and be an anchor for community development."

Qualifications were due June 16. The four finalists, announced in mid-September, were asked to respond to a request for proposals, with the winner to be selected in early 2015.

Campus connections

The finalists all have university ties. Stressing the economic development connection, Columbia University has proposed a site on its new campus in West Harlem. With backing from the state, the University of Hawaii is offering an eight-acre oceanfront site in Honolulu's rapidly developing Kakaako neighborhood.

Back in the Midwest, the University of Chicago has proposed three South Side sites. One is in a largely vacant area immediately adjacent to an elevated rail station. A second is in historic Jackson Park, near the Museum of Science and Industry (which is headed by David Mosena, a former APA research director). The third is a former country club on the lakefront, now a cultural center owned by the park district and in need of significant renovation.

Meanwhile, the University of Illinois at Chicago is pitching three locations of its own. "A year and a half ago, the chancellor appointed an exploratory committee to find out what was involved" in applying, says committee member Michael Pagano, dean of the UIC College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs.

One of the picks was a grassy swath of land next to a highway interchange that happens to be almost the exact place where Daniel Burnham located a monumental civic center in his 1909 Plan of Chicago. The second site is part of the west campus, where the health sciences departments are clustered. The third is part of North Lawndale, an economically depressed West Side neighborhood.

Both the west campus and the highway interchange sites are next to elevated rail, or L, stops, a feature that makes them attractive to the Obama foundation. The RFQ stresses the need for ready accessibility, a requirement that could work against North Lawndale as well as some of the other locations in Chicago and elsewhere.

"We decided to submit several sites," Pagano says, "each with its own advantages and disadvantages. We wanted to tell the president that we are flexible." He notes that the university representatives worked closely with neighborhood groups in each area to put together a bid. They are all strong contenders, he says.

Chicago's non-university bids failed to make the list of semifinalists. The Black Metropolis National Heritage Area Commission, a civic group, had hoped to lure the library to the South Side site of Michael Reese Hospital, which had been cleared in anticipation of attracting the 2016 Summer Olympics (it went to Rio de Janeiro instead). A local developer's pitch for the former U.S. Steel site on the far-south lakefront was likewise rejected by the Obama foundation.

Although the site-selection process is being run by the foundation and the final choice is in the hands of the Obamas, there are certain rules and guidelines that must be followed. For instance, the National Archives and Records Administration, the federal agency in charge, frowns on allowing different sites for the library and the museum, although that was done in the case of President Gerald Ford (library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and museum in Grand Rapids, Ford's hometown).

Funding for presidential libraries can be complicated. The site is typically donated — by an associated university or another entity. Funding for construction of both the museum and library is the responsibility of the presidential foundation while the archives are for the most part maintained by NARA. The foundations are also expected to create an endowment.

No matter what the roadblocks, Pagano has no doubt of the value of attracting a presidential library. "These are wonderful destinations for scholars — for everyone," he says, even in a digital age that allows easy online access to the latest research. He notes that an added bonus could well be the creation of a new academic center, which would draw visitors from around the globe. "How about the Obama College of Public Administration?" he offers.

In the beginning

There were no rules or precedents to follow in 1939, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the first presidential library next to his home in upstate Hyde Park, New York. It's now part of a national historic site encompassing several properties.

According to the library's public programs specialist Clifford Laube, Roosevelt, unsure at the time whether he would run for a third term, decided to build a library and leave his papers to the National Archives (which Congress created in 1934). After his death, the family decided to bequeath his home to the federal government.

"He didn't need a consultant," says site director Lynn Bassanese. "He just said, 'Let's put the library here.'" The result is a charming ensemble of Dutch Colonial fieldstone buildings in a bucolic setting. The exhibits have been substantially jazzed up in the last year or so, with some electronic displays, but on the whole it remains a peaceful and scholarly place.

Well, not entirely peaceful. Ed Cigna, a member of the town planning board who retired to Hyde Park a decade ago, refers to the heated battles over the types of businesses in a strip mall across the road from the museum. "We are very concerned about the impact of the stores on the national park," he says. "Drive down Route 9 and see the kind of development we're trying to avoid."

Planning commission chair Michael Dupree is a former journalist who moved from New York City almost 20 years ago. Soon after, he joined the Hyde Park Visual Environment Committee, which functions more or less as an urban design watchdog in the surrounding township, and was involved in the battle to head off a giant Walmart along Route 9. "The site was saved from commercialization at the last minute when Scenic Hudson [a regional conservation group] stepped in to buy it," he says.

Is it worth it?

That's what I asked Allen Sanderson, the University of Chicago economist who is known for debunking get-rich-quick municipal schemes. He lumps football stadiums, arenas, and convention centers into one basket — taxpayer money wasters.

It turns out that he's somewhat more sanguine about presidential libraries. "Many years ago, on a vacation in Santa Barbara, I stopped in Simi Valley to see the Reagan library [which has the highest attendance of all the libraries]. I'm not a big Reagan fan, and Simi Valley is in the middle of nowhere, but I thought it was impressive. It combines a lot of things, [including] Air Force One and Reagan's burial spot. 

"But I still believe that these things tend not to be good civic investments," he says. The main reason is that library visitors don't buy enough to justify the enormous up-front costs. They might get something small, but they don't go back.

"An Obama library might do better than the others" — if it's located in Chicago and the Obamas decide to live there. But Sanderson suspects that will not be the case and that the library and the surrounding neighborhood might suffer. All the libraries do well at first, he notes, but they don't necessarily keep up the pace.

Benjamin Hufbauer of the University of Louisville expresses similar views in his 2005 book Presidential Temples. He likes some of the buildings (describing the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum as a "space age temple"), and he says he often enjoys the museum exhibits (including, unexpectedly, one on the gowns worn by first ladies). But he questions whether taxpayers should be contributing toward what are often self-serving displays.

Where the money should be spent, he says, is on the archives, which are sorely behind in making materials available. The number of documents has risen exponentially, he says, and "keeping track of all these papers — plus the digital data — is extremely labor-intensive. Yet the number of archivists has not kept up." In some cases, the shift of documents to the archives has been held up because of politics — the Watergate-related Nixon papers being a case in point.

Hufbauer also notes that, while some universities go after presidential libraries, others have been known to say no. That was the case with Harvard, which turned down the Kennedy Library (mainly because it didn't want the tourists, he says). It was also true of Stanford and the Reagan Library — although "the reason there was mostly political." It also should be noted that the Kennedy Library wound up with a spectacular location on Boston's Columbia Point and a dramatic design by I.M. Pei. 

Popular favorite

Hufbauer, along with other observers, sees a bright star in Little Rock, Arkansas, the home of the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. "Clinton put his library in an economically depressed area, where it has sparked a multimillion-dollar revitalization," he says. But that experience, he believes, is an exception. 

Little Rock assistant city manager Bryan Day goes further. "The library absolutely changed Little Rock," he said just days before he was scheduled to leave the city for a new job. "There was a lot of competition for it — from other places in the state and elsewhere. The city put together a small group of folks — including some urban planners — to start looking for a site where Little Rock could get the most bang for the buck." The final choice was the dilapidated 20-acre warehouse district next to downtown.

A small group flew to Washington to present the city's plan. When the city's bid succeeded, it proceeded to clear the site — at the same time investing in a new public library for the area. "Those two developments solidified the idea that this part of town would be the next big thing," says Day.

Since that time, some 4,500 residential units have been built, along with three hotels. Restaurants have moved in and so have offices, including the headquarters of the nonprofit Heifer International. "We've transformed this part of the city into a 24-hour downtown." He acknowledges that other factors may be involved, including the ongoing participation of the Clinton family. "But the library gave the redevelopment the push it needed," he says.

Day acknowledges the critics, who disparaged the idea of commemorating a president who came so close to removal following his impeachment. "We took a lot of heat for this investment, coming so soon after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but the city stood firm. And 10 years later, we can say that was the best investment the city ever made," he says.

Day was the city's parks director when the library planning process began. A major issue at the time, he says, was the city's plan to build on an existing riverfront park. "That involved various planning and zoning issues," he says. Environmentalists and park preservationists who were opposed to the site sued the city. They lost, but the acrimony remained.

Meanwhile, says Day, "People from around the globe come here regularly for symposiums at the University of Arkansas's Clinton School of Public Service. And they leave saying Little Rock is a pretty cool town."

A nod to Disney

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois, which opened in 2005, is not operated by NARA and is thus not an official part of the presidential library system. But it does have a lot to tell us about what to do and perhaps what not to do.

For years, Lincoln's papers were housed in the Illinois State Historical Library, which occupied basement quarters in the old state capitol on the downtown square. Then state, county, and city joined forces to fund a new library-and-museum complex. The city of Springfield created a tax-increment financing district to provide funds to clear the eight-acre site. 

Development of the facility "was a true public-private partnership," says Michael Farmer, the city's director of planning and economic development (he's on the economic development side). Although the choice of the downtown site was a contentious one, it turned out well, he says, giving easy interstate [and Amtrak] access to travelers from Chicago, a major source of visitors. No federal funding was involved in construction, although state money — and political clout — played a large role.

"Quite honestly, I have not met a single soul who doesn't enjoy the museum," says Farmer. Today, "by pure numbers, it's the most visited attraction in the city," drawing more tourists than Lincoln's home and his tomb. The 300,000 or so yearly visitors now have a reason to stay longer than the three or four hours they used to spend in the city, he says. Moreover, the Central Area TIF district has exceeded expectations, although downtown stores have not benefited from the museum as much as they had hoped.

To be sure, there are critics who object to the state-operated museum's heavy reliance on electronic devices of all sorts, including the animatronic figures reminiscent of similar exhibits at Disney amusement parks. It's a trend that has spread to the official presidential libraries as well.

A draw or not a draw

So who's right in the debate about the value of presidential libraries? Chicagoan Roger Huff, a presidential history buff, has visited all but two of the NARA-operated libraries. "I appreciate the library exhibits and programs," he says, "but I only stop when I am nearby for some other reason. And I rarely have a meal or buy anything more than a trinket in the gift shop. So I have to question the claims that these facilities are engines of economic development."

Lance Simms, AICP, director of planning and development services for College Station, Texas, has a different view. The library devoted to George H. W. Bush was built on the Texas A&M campus in 1996. "It's yet another tourist destination and that has a positive effect on local hotels, motels, and restaurants" in this town of 100,000 (half of them students), says Simms. Some of those tourists are heading to the Bush School of Public Administration. (The name was the carrot the school dangled to get the library, Simms says.)

There are three presidential libraries in Texas — in Austin, College Station, and Dallas — causing an observer to ask about competition for visitors. To Simms, it's not a problem. "We don't think of it as competition," he says. "We think of it as a bragging right." 

Ruth Eckdish Knack is a former executive editor of Planning.