Enjoying winter’s heaven

From The Chicago Tribune

Chicago has more than 600 parks, with Jackson Park among the most magnificent. The lakefront gem was designed in 1871 by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, trailblazers in landscape architecture. Jackson Park hosted the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 and is home to one of the fair’s legacy structures, the Museum of Science and Industry. A stroll can take you past cherry blossoms in the park’s Japanese garden or herons basking in one of its lagoons.

That aesthetic and history explain why Jackson Park resides on the National Register of Historic Places. And it’s that designation that will give federal authorities first crack at the proposal for the Obama Presidential Center, long before the city formally evaluates the project. That review will look at what impact the center would have on the park and demand changes where needed.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office, a strong proponent of the Obama center, seems confident the review will be just another box to check on the way to groundbreaking. But the federal review, which began earlier this month, should be anything but routine.

Emanuel has sway over other bodies that will give the center either a thumbs up or thumbs down — the Chicago Park District, the city’s Plan Commission and the City Council. But that’s not the case with federal authorities. Among their questions: Would former President Barack Obama’s ambitious vision for a sprawling 20-acre campus change the park’s character? Would it introduce elements incompatible with the park? Would it physically damage the park?

The federal review will have teeth. If authorities find that the center will harm Jackson Park, they could draw up a legally binding agreement that lays out how that harm can be minimized.

The center has the potential to transform the South Side and the city as a whole. Obama Foundation projections call for the Obama center to draw between 625,000 and 760,000 visitors each year — numbers large enough to increase retail, dining and lodging revenue for South Side businesses. The foundation, which is raising money to build the center, predicts that, over the center’s first 10 years, its economic impact for the South Side could be as much as $2.1 billion.

The scope and details of the project are a work in progress. Some ideas have come and gone. It’s too soon to judge the overall plan or its impact on the park and the South Side.

But we’re glad to see multiple reviews, the federal one included. Jackson Park is a jewel too precious to be irrevocably marred, even to honor a popular president and create a positive economic impact.

There can, and should, be a way to intertwine the Obama Center and Jackson Park that proves beneficial to both — and to all Chicagoans, including generations not yet born. When we change one of the finest parks in this metropolis, we’re having impacts that can last centuries.

Federal and Chicago officials will have time to evaluate and perhaps modify the proposed center and its surround. The Obama Foundation, which had planned to formally present its plans to City Hall this month, now doesn’t expect to approach the city’s Planning Department until early 2018. The federal review process isn’t expected to wrap up until autumn. Foundation officials still think they can break ground before the end of 2018, but in addition to city approval, they’ll need a go-ahead from federal authorities.

The other major project planned for Jackson Park, a Tiger Woods-designed golf course that would combine the footprints of the existing Jackson Park and South Shore courses, has also been slowed down. A Chicago Park District review of that project has been put off until next year.

We’ve been concerned that the rush to get plans for both mega-projects approved shoves aside concerns that locals have about each project’s impact on the park and its neighbors. We’re pleased to see a more deliberative, open process take shape. It’s possible that the Obama center, the new golf course and the rest of Jackson Park can co-exist. But that will happen only if those neighbors have a significant say in how these projects affect their communities and their lives.

As I drive through town, I pass shops, cars and the general hustle of the inner city. Upon arriving in the countryside, I take in and appreciate the ambience that always accompanies the natural. I see skeletal trees, and an earth brown ground patched with blindingly white ice. I think of the rarity the snow is in the South, and I reminisce of the snowfall that took place a week prior. It was a sight Southerners relish, a landscape that would make paper look flawed.

On that day, I wake to a sharp chill and silence. The air around me is crisp, the fluidity of the atmosphere is frozen in place. The silence is in no way eerie, but filled with a subtle bliss. The silence accompanied by the frigid air magnified the overwhelming feeling of surreal absence I feel. I take in the uniqueness of the situation and quickly went to turn the heater in my room on. I turn on my favorite soft, classical music and carried on to the kitchen to gather my daily breakfast: water, black coffee and a biscotti. I return to my room, set my items down, and indulge in the new fluidity of the air that the warmth of the heater brings me. As I start to get comfortable, I notice that the sun is not brightening my room like it normally would at that time of morning. I go to my window and open my blinds to be met with an awe inspiring sight. My God, the snow!

I gaze out of the center of my rim-fogged window to the blanket of snow in front of me and the woods that lay beyond the yard. The scene is intense, yet calm; chaotic, yet peaceful. I looked in awe as the snow falls gracefully from a wintry sky. It descends with the character equivalent to that of a slow-motion downpour. My focus follows the descent of the snowfall leading me to the ground that lies below. A blanche landscape lay before me, uninterrupted by patches of grass and dirt. I am not blinded, I wonder why. My eyes rise from the ground to the woods that lay just past the lawn. I see trees with white branches, occasionally turning brown when the weight of the snow has become too much to bare. I look past the wood line and see a gray veil concealing the remaining woods that I know. With the transparency of the woods gone, I feel controlled. I follow the veil up to the sky and see the unchanging gray veil has consumed the sky.

A feeling of containment comes over me, I cannot see through the woods like I once could, I see no clouds, no sun, no neighbors. My concentration is broken when I hear the floor creak when I move my foot.

The absence has returned. The power cuts my heater off, and the song has ended long ago. I stare back out of my window. The absence brings me to a solemn self-reflection and soft appreciation for the rare sight I am privileged to witness.

During this self-reflection, the feeling of containment flees. I feel a sense of calm fill me. I am at a moment of bliss, all day-to-day reality fades out of my mind. I am alone in winter’s heaven. GREYSON OSWALT-SMITH