Inside The Obama Presidential Center

**Photo Credit:** Obama Presidential Center

Traditionally, presidential libraries and monuments have been another marker in time– , federally-operating for tourists to pass through, take a photo, and leave.

The Obama Presidential Center was never going to settle for being a quiet and isolated archive – nor is it directly operated by the government.

Sitting on the South Side of Chicago in Jackson Park, the Center exists in a neighborhood that has never lacked for talent. Though broader narratives may paint a different picture, families have been rooted there for generations, artists build in converted storefronts, and visionaries create their own rooms and opportunities. This very ecosystem supported President Barack Obama in his career beginnings and love that would launch a historic run that ran on Hope and Change

In our first piece, we wrote about how access determines what a community becomes, how third spaces have always lived or died on whether the people who need them most can actually get in the door – and the Obama Presidential Center answers that question before you even ask it.

The campus is a vibrant community hub – open daily, free of charge, for all to enjoy. Most of what's on the 19-acre campus doesn't require a ticket, only the museum does – and was intentionally chosen as an asset for an economic boost, jobs, and global attention to a historically significant yet often overlooked urban community.

Everything else is built to be walked into, sat in, and actually used, weaving together designs, textures and environments.

The Forum, open Monday afternoons and Tuesday through Sunday, holds recording studios and an atrium built for community programming. Home Court, an NBA-regulation basketball court, is there for the neighborhood to actually play on. The Chicago Public Library has its own branch on-site too, not a private archive, but a real library where any Chicagoan can walk in and get a card. John Lewis Plaza sits just outside it, a wide-open gathering space built for nothing more than existing in public, together. There's the Eleanor Roosevelt Fruit and Vegetable Garden, where people are learning to grow their own food in a city that doesn't always make that easy. A free playground. The Great Lawn, where, true story, a couple got engaged this year, because that's what a third space is supposed to hold.

"This is one of the biggest things that's happened for our community in my lifetime," said one Chicago native who works on the events team at the Center, born and raised on the South Side. "It's not something that was dropped into our neighborhood. It feels like it was built for us, a third space in the truest sense."

The art is where the intention really shows. The Center has brought in 25 new public art installations from artists around the world, and the vast majority are free and accessible to anyone who walks the campus.

President Obama has spoken directly to why that matters: "The arts have always been central to the American experience. They provoke thought, challenge assumptions, and shape how we define our narratives as a country," signaling the ethos of the campus. Like art, a third space can shape how the people gathering see themselves, and each other.

What the Obama Presidential Center gets right is something we keep coming back to , a third space only works if it's accesible to the communities who need it most.

Not reachable in theory, reachable in practice, in operating hours, in ticket prices, in whether a kid from South Shore feels like the campus reflects their needs.

Only time will tell if residents feel that its construction delivers on its promise.

But so far, Chicago didn't just get another building. It got a pillar.