By John Gregory/Illinois Radio Network
CHICAGO – The next step for the Obama Presidential Center is deciding who’s going to design it.
Obama Foundation chairman Marty Nesbitt said hundreds of architects have responded to requests for qualifications, including minority-owned architectural firms based in Illinois.
“We are narrowing our list and soon we’ll invite a subset of those respondents to participate in a request for proposal process,” Nesbitt said. “The President has already made clear that he wants the foundation’s mission and vision to drive the actual design itself.”
Nesbitt expects the short list will be released sometime early next year. A decision on which of the two Chicago locations will be the site for the center is also expected in the first half of 2016.
Either location isn’t far from neighborhoods struggling with gang violence, and Nesbitt alluded to those issues in his speech to the City Club of Chicago Tuesday.
“We’re about to invite the world to our living room,” Nesbitt said. “We need to get our house in order.”
