The City of Chicago has engaged in “a short con shell game” to help Barack Obama build a 12-story museum and library dedicated to his presidency on public parkland, a new lawsuit alleges.
Protect Our Parks filed the lawsuit Monday seeking to block construction of the Obama Presidential Center in historic Jackson Park on Chicago’s South Side, where a young Obama cut his political teeth.
Established law precludes the Chicago Park District from transferring public parkland in Jackson Park to a private non-governmental entity for its own use, the lawsuit claims.
"Defendants have chosen to deal with it in a classic Chicago political way, known as a short con shell game, a corrupt scheme to deceive and seemingly legitimize an illegal land grab, one that will endure for centuries to come, regardless of future changing public park needs and increasingly consequential environmental conditions,” according to the lawsuit.