A small band of environmentalists takes fight against Obama Presidential Center to federal court

When Charlotte Adelman was a student at the University of Chicago, the nearby parks became a refuge for her, sprawling expanses of green where she could escape the concrete urban landscape.

It was then, many decades ago, that Adelman began her journey to becoming a fighter for environmental justice. Along the way, she has fought to preserve open spaces, ban pesticides, and co-authored a book, “Prairie Directory of North America.”

Now, Adelman, 81, has set her sights on her biggest target yet — blocking the Obama Presidential Center from being built in Chicago’s Jackson Park.

Adelman, along with her fellow advocates Maria Valencia, Jeremiah Jurevis and the advocacy group Protect Our Parks, have filed suit against the presidential center. They contend that the city and its park district do not have the authority to make public parkland available for the project. Jackson Park, they say, must remain untouched.

“I’ve devoted years of my life to the environment. It’s very important to me, it’s not just an interest, but the motivation of my life,” she said. “Chicago, when it was established, had so much open prairie land. Much of that is gone. Our founders … they carved out space. I assume they thought there would be buildings, but I doubt they ever thought the city of Chicago would cover everything with buildings for miles.

“Our parks are the last remnants of open space.”

In filing their lawsuit, Adelman and her fellow plaintiffs have joined a long list of groups that have tried to influence the shape and scope of the project. Many activists, for example, pushed for the center to be built in an economically struggling area of the South Side, and some are holding out for guarantees that the half-billion-dollar project won’t disrupt the demographic makeup of the community or displace residents.

Others have raised questions about who will get the jobs and largest contracts. In the months after the project was proposed, there were protests and demonstrations and heated public meetings revealing divisions within the community.

But Adelman and Protect Our Parks have emerged as perhaps the most strident opponents of the project and the only group that is taking legal action to block it altogether.

The lawsuit has sparked difficult conversations within the community as even residents who have been critical of the center wonder if the legal action might actually kill a project that has been touted as transformative for the economically struggling South Side.

For much of the public protests surrounding the center, Adelman and her fellow plaintiffs kept a relatively low profile. Not anymore. By taking the matter to court, Adelman and Protect Our Parks have stirred memories of litigation that led “Star Wars” creator George Lucas to drop his plans for a Lucas Museum along Chicago’s lakefront.

“I think the Obama Foundation and the city should take this lawsuit seriously,” said Juanita Irizarry, executive director of Friends of the Parks, a group that has raised similar environmental concerns but chose not to take court action. “Often we’ve seen the city communicate to the public who try to bring up questions that the struggle is over. There are still various levels of approvals that have to be made. We see this lawsuit as a valuable tool.”

For Margaret Schmid, an activist with Jackson Park Watch, the lawsuit provides a chance to push for an alternate location for the presidential center.

“We are in favor of having the Obama Presidential Center on the South Side, but it’s a matter of location,” she said. “If they had chosen someplace else, construction would have started already. There are consequences to their choice.”

A hearing on the lawsuit is scheduled for later this month.

This court battle comes just as the second federal review meeting has been delayed for a second time this summer, and the foundation announced that groundbreaking would be pushed into next year.

The foundation isn’t a defendant in the lawsuit. Instead the suit targets the city and park district saying that the presidential center isn’t the same as a presidential library and should not be granted public land. But even if the project was designed to house Obama’s archives, this collection still wouldn’t want it situated in a park.

“While the lawsuit is premature because the agreements that will govern the terms of the Obama Presidential Center have not yet been finalized, we are confident that the lawsuit is without merit,” Bill McCaffrey, a spokesman for the city’s Law Department, said in a written statement. “The Obama Presidential Center will be a valuable resource for all members of the public and will enhance the public’s enjoyment of Jackson Park.”

Officials with the foundation would not comment on the lawsuit, but said they were following the court action and would cooperate with the city as needed.

Still, for Adelman and her network of supporters, the lawsuit is about fighting to preserve valuable park space in a city that is becoming home to more and more skyscrapers and buildings, she said. It’s also to protect the homes of birds, butterflies, trees, plants and wildlife that too often get overlooked, she said.

“I’m opposed to damaging what little open space we have,” she said. “Jackson Park is one of the big bird-watching centers — it’s right in the flight path of migratory birds. These birds are beautiful, exquisite, jaw-dropping works of art. Why put a gigantic tower into a migratory bird pathway? It seems to me there is no way to mitigate that.”

Bowean writes for the Chicago Tribune.

lbowean@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @lollybowean