CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — The Barack Obama Presidential Center is likely more than one year away from opening, but the Obama Foundation has already been mounting programs as it continues to look ahead.
Michael Strautmanis, executive vice president of the Obama Foundation, said its programs — primarily geared toward training the next generation of leaders worldwide — will be headquartered at the campus in Jackson Park, and the mission will evolve.
“This is about democracy,” Strautmanis said. “This is about citizenship and how to inspire people to work together and really invest in the values that go underneath our democracy — and that means it has to change.”
The Obama Presidential Center is also meant to benefit its immediate community in and around Jackson Park. That’s a goal that Strautmanis said they’ve already begun working toward.
“We got started on that early,” he said. “We have very robust goals — bigger than the goals that the city of Chicago even requires — for the people who are working and building the presidential center and, as importantly, the businesses that are involved in our contracts.”
Strautmanis said that the striking tower, currently under construction, is a symbol of the strong leadership programs the foundation will run out of there.
“Inside that tower will be a museum experience where people will be able to go deep into the Obama presidency, into the experiences that led [the] president and Mrs. Obama to make the decision to dedicate their life to public service,” he said.
Strautmanis said he hopes museum goers will ask themselves: “What’s my role?”
He said the foundation is making sure there will be jobs and contracts for people in the community, and he added that they have consulted with the neighborhood about the plan for the center campus. That feedback is something they’ve taken seriously, he said, with community concerns driving the decision to change the museum’s parking to an underground garage instead of an above-ground lot.
The Foundation's website, which has much more information about those plans, is Obama.org.
Michael Strautmanis is the guest on the latest “At Issue” program, which airs every Sunday at 9:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. Listen live right here.
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