Lee Bey: The Urban Observer

(photos by Lee Bey) 

Next month marks the 10th anniversary of the extra alarm blaze that nearly destroyed the vacant historic Pullman Factory and Administration building at 111th and Cottage Grove.

For a while there, it seemed the fire had the potential to put some heat behind long-dormant plans to rehab the state-owned national landmark and find new uses for it. Gov. George Ryan and State Sen. Emil Jones found cash to rehab the tower's fire-ravaged exterior. But Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration seems clueless as to what to do with the building or the neighboring Hotel Florence, a Pullman landmark also owned by the state.

So the factory sits there, empty, surrounded by vast fenced-in acreage. Just like it was in December, 1998 when an arsonist set fire to the joint.

Truth is, nobody knows what to do with the site. Talk of it being turned to railroad museum is so 1990s; nobody will come to Pullman to see trains---no matter show shiny--sitting in a building. So what will breathe new life into the facility and create a draw to this unique piece of Americana (and the historic neighborhood that surrounds it)?

I got an idea: Turn the factory into the most visible adaptive-reuse project in the world: The Barack Obama Presidential Library.

I know. I know. The man hasn't even been sworn in yet. But given the size and cost of presidential libraries, its never too early to start thinking about these things. The investment could be just the shot in the arm the site needs. The William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park, located in Little Rock, sits on 28 acres and cost $165 million. The George W. Bush Presidential Library--construction starts next year---could cost as much as $500 million. (And here I was, thinking the GWB library would be composed of six Childcraft encyclopedias and a bookmobile.)

For the Obama Presidential Library, the state could donate the Pullman factory site. The RFP for the project could require preserving and reusing the existing structure as part of the main entrace of an exciting new complex and park. It all could be built on the existing Pullman factory property.(Click here to see an aerial shot of the site, and while you're there, click on Google streerview and have a look around.) If Obama is as popular a president as he has been a candidate, the library would be a huge draw. The Lincoln Library in Springfield draws a million visitor year; Obama can pull those numbers standing in Grant Park with no more than a microphone and a teleprompter.

Presidential libraries have all are the papers and artifacts of the president's term, but other things as well. The Reagan Library has the Air Force One used by President Reagan during his term. I visited the Lyndon Johnson Library a few years ago and saw, among other things, the presidential limo and Lady Bird's office.

The Obama library as the potential to be a big coveted prize and I can imagine Hyde Park and the University of Chicago lobbying heavily for it. But Obama's early days as a community organizer were spent on the far South Side. Back then, his strategy meetings took place at a McDonald's just three blocks due south of the Pullman factory. A Obama presidential library could bring to Pullman the kind of change that's sorely needed.