Podbit · The Indicator from Planet Money
The Obama Presidential Center opened on Chicago's South Side as a $850 million monument to hope — but right across the street, Hyde Park Academy students are walking out over the deaths of classmates and cuts to support services. The juxtaposition captures everything complicated about the center's arrival.
Where this was said
At 0:35 · chapter starts 0:28
Gene Demby opens Code Switch by grounding the Obama Presidential Center not in its architecture brochure, but in the school directly across Stony Island Avenue: Hyde Park Academy, where students staged a walkout after three of their classmates died in a single month and community support groups were cut from the budget. [1] — Gene Demby "3 student deaths in 1 month: Three students at Hyde Park Academy died within a single month, prompting a student walkout to protest cuts to…" 00:55 Against this backdrop, Demby describes the sprawling, ambitiously designed campus — basketball courts, a Chicago Public Library branch, gardens, a lagoon, grills for public use, and a sledding hill that Michelle Obama had built because she never got to sled as a South Side kid. The $850 million center was funded almost entirely with private money, though the city contributed to construction costs related to the public park. Demby notes that from the moment the Jackson Park site was announced roughly a decade ago, it generated substantial pushback from multiple directions: fears of accelerated gentrification and housing displacement, concerns about privatizing public parkland, and a countervailing sentiment that South Side residents deserve nice things too. BA Parker captures the central tension in a single question: don't the folks on the South Side deserve nice things? The chapter closes by introducing an anonymous 2019 Hyde Park graduate who expresses cautious hope for the center while worrying that the rising costs around it will push students like her out.
Three students at Hyde Park Academy died within a single month, prompting a student walkout to protest cuts to community support services.
The Obama Presidential Center reportedly cost around $850 million to build, funded almost entirely through private fundraising by the Obama Foundation.
The Obama Presidential Center was set to officially open to the public on Juneteenth, a symbolically loaded choice given the center's location in a historically Black neighborhood.
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