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The Chicago Department of Planning and Development estimates that some 700,000 people will visit the Obama Presidential Center (OPC) each year after its completion in 2025. But the future of two sites closest to the campus, The Clarence Darrow Memorial Bridge, a would-be linchpin of foot traffic flow from the OPC to the lake, and the Japanese garden on Wooded Island, remains in question.
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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700K per year visitors is a wildly optimistic and fanciful figure. Maybe 700K but unlikely for first year then a severe drop after. Here is real data for highest year presidential library attendance: Clinton 2005 (447,788). Reagan 2006 (440,301), George W Bush 2014 (456,000), Lyndon Johnson 2014 (139,026), JFK 1980 (563,470). Expect something like 150K for Obama after year one. But Chicago parkland and Jackson Park will forever be ruined and replaced with Obama’s monstrosity. Absolutely disgusting. Source is tribune article: http://apps.chicagotribune.com/graphics/presidential-libraries-attendance/