As illustrated above, plans for the Barack Obama Presidential Center call for the crass closure of key, historic thoroughfares on the South lakefront.  Cornell Drive, a highly trafficked north-south artery, is eliminated, resulting in park-vitiating expansions of Stony Island Avenue, Lake Shore Drive, and Hayes Drive. These changes have no impact on the number of vehicles circulating through and around the park, but do have the effect of consolidating traffic into impenetrable highways.  All of today’s traffic, and indeed more, is projected to remain.  Budgeted currently at $170 million and likely to increase, there is no public gain in this rerouting.

Quite to the contrary:  The road reconfigurations eat into existing parkland, killing over four hundred mature trees (see Slide 1 for more information).  Even more tragically, the many less prosperous communities further south are cut off from direct access to the vast resources of Hyde Park and the University of Chicago.  Taken as a whole, considering the expanded golf course, the east-west highway Hayes Drive is to become, the raised and fortified barrier of the private Presidential Center holdings, and the existing lagoon and driving range, a series of physical and metal boundaries is established in the park.  These break the space into distinct compartments, with limited inter-communication.  What can then be discerned as clear lines of demarcation are established, creating various lines of defense, further differentiating between those who are welcome and those unwelcome.