Chicago Expected To Be Named Future Home of Barack Obama Presidential Center

Caption: The Chicago Tribune and other news media outlets are reporting that Chicago will be named host city of the Barack Obama presidential library. Possible sites include Jackson Park (top left) and Washington Park (top right), both on Chicago’s South Side.

It’s almost official. The site of the future Barack Obama Presidential Center will announced at 5 a.m. Tuesday and it’s a pretty sure bet that the location will be in POTUS’s adopted hometown of Chicago.

The early morning announcement on the Barack Obama Foundation website will be followed up with a press conference at the Gary Comer Youth Center, 7200 S. Ingleside Ave., beginning at noon Tuesday, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel (the president’s former chief of staff) and Barack Obama Foundation Chairman Martin Nesbitt will participate in the press conference, which will be streamed live on the foundation’s website.

For the past several weeks news media outlets have leaked that the University of Chicago -- where Obama once taught law -- will serve as the presidential center’s academic partner.

University of Illinois at Chicago, however, also landed on the short list of institutions under consideration that included New York’s Columbia University and University of Hawaii, where President Obama grew up.

Wherever the Obama presidential library lands, it will be in one of two locations on Chicago’s South Side, Jackson Park (location of the 1893 Columbian Exhibition) or Washington Park, the Chicago Tribune reported.

How much information is divulged at Tuesday’s press conference remains to be seen.

The Barack Obama Foundation was created in January 2014 to lay the groundwork for the president and First Lady Michelle Obama’s philanthropic endeavors when President Obama leaves office in January 2017.

The foundation’s first task is to raise funds for the presidential library and museum. The Barack Obama Presidential Center will host multimedia exhibits designed to interpret milestones of what Obama’s historic presidency has meant to the nation and the world, as well as online exhibitions and resources for those who can’t make the trip, the foundation’s website says.

The presidential library is also expected to invigorate the South Side, through job creation and partnerships with community organizations.

Once completed, the Barack Obama Presidential Center will join 13 other presidential libraries administered by the National Archives and Records Administration, beginning with the 31st president, Herbert Hoover, in West Branch, IA.