* Back on December 8th, activist Mary Claire Kendall wrote a story about how she and others were hoping to preserve a Hyde Park apartment building where Ronald Reagan lived for less than a year as a young child…
A hot war is now underway over the University of Chicago Medical Center’s decision to raze Reagan’s Chicago childhood home, which it announced this fall, giving no definite date (best guess: by Jan. 1). The property on which Reagan’s Hyde Park home sits is slated to become an empty lot. At the same time, the university is lobbying vigorously to build President Obama’s Presidential Library.
* A few days later, ultra conservative columnist Judi McLeod posted this blog entry, entitled “Ronald Reagan’s Boyhood Home Set for Wrecking Ball by Month’s End“…
Somewhere among the environs of the University of Chicago Medical Center, they’re about to “pave paradise and put up a parking lot”.
In political lingo, the university medical center is going to demolish the house where President Ronald Reagan grew up in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighbourhood. […]
Meanwhile back at that ranch known as the University of Chicago, university officials, which once included Michelle Obama, are tied up in a pet project of their own. They are actively lobbying for an Obama Presidential Library. Obama’s own Tony Rezko-enabled home also happens to be in the Hyde Park neighborhood. (A Google map search places the two homes less than half a mile apart.)
* The early January demolition schedule came and went. On Friday, January 25, the Reagan home activist Mary Claire Kendall wrote…
Over the holidays, when the demolition and wrecking equipment showed up on site, we sprang into action and, after lots of behind-the-scenes work from Tuesday, January 1 to Wednesday, January 9, we discerned a palpable shift in the winds.
On Friday, January 11, Eleanor Gorski, Assistant Commissioner for Historic Preservation at the Department of Housing and Economic Development in Chicago, who approves demolition permits, affirmed that she fully expects the review process will take the full 90 days—until March 29—and that granting the Reagan home landmark status, after all, is one of the possibilities they are considering. The day before, I called the department and was told by a staff person that there had been “a lot of back and forth” vis-à-vis the home at “higher levels” and someone would be contacting me. Only two days before the department spokesperson, Pete Strazzobosco, was downplaying the worth of the Reagan home. As he told the Hyde Park Herald, “It’s a pretty modest apartment building for its style and age. It doesn’t have very much style, at least not enough for the Landmarks Commission to consider a possible landmark for it.” (January 9 issue) But, the next day at 8 p.m., the University of Chicago’s student newspaper, The Chicago Maroon reported that, according to Strazzobosco, “the City of Chicago’s Historic Preservation Division will use this time to ‘reach out to the property owner and discuss alternatives to demolition.’”
On Wednesday, January 16, the Friends of President Reagan’s Chicago Home incorporated in the State of Illinois and this week we added two new board members—Don Totten, the most prominent early Illinois Republican support of President Reagan, and Dan Proft, a rising star in the Illinois Republican Party and political commentator for WLS in Chicago.
* But on the very same day that Ms. Kendall posted that item about the change in attitude, Illinois Republican gadfly William Kelly posted this “story”…
While the university is planning to kill Reagan’s home, University of Chicago is also aggressively lobbying to be the site of President Barack Obama’s presidential library.
Could the Reagan site become a parking lot for Obama’s library? Opponents of the demolition say yes.
* Which led to this Daily Mail story…
The Chicago home where the late President Ronald Reagan grew up is slated to be demolished and potentially turned into a parking lot for President Obama’s Library, it was revealed today.
* Which led to this NewsMax item…
The University of Chicago Medical Center has announced plans to turn Ronald Reagan’s childhood home in Chicago into a parking lot for President Barack Obama’s library.
* Fox News jumped in…
* And so did Drudge…
* The echo chamber forced the White House press secretary to respond on Wednesday…
* Also on Wednesday, Mary Claire Kendall, the childhood home preservation activist, declared the story to be a farce…
The claim published in Newsmax today and the Washington Times on Friday, re-posted in Drudge, that the University of Chicago is planning to demolish the Reagan home at 832 E. 57th Street to make way for a parking lot for the Obama Presidential Library is utterly inaccurate, according to informed sources in Hyde Park.
* The University of Chicago also denied the reports…
“832 E. 57th St. is one of a number of vacant buildings the University owns that will be taken down to allow for expansion of the medical and biological research campus,” Jeremy Manier, news director at the University of Chicago, wrote in a email to Mother Jones. “The University’s permit request currently is under review by the city. Recent media reports that have speculated on other potential uses of the property are inaccurate.”
* But Kelly was not backing down yesterday. From his Facebook page…
White House press secretary Jay Carney is responding to my story on Reagan’s Chicago home being bulldozed by the University of Chicago - which has been lobbying to be the site of Obama’s presidential library. I don’t believe Carney for a minute!
* And from an e-mail to his followers about his great scoop…
OUR STORY ON THE DEMOLITON OF RONALD REAGAN’S CHICAGO HOME GOES BIG ON DRUDGE REPORT!
COULD RONALD REAGAN’S CHICAGO HOME BECOME A PARKING LOT FOR OBAMA’S LIBRARY?!
RAHM’S PLAN: DEMOLISH REAGAN’S HOME?
A big thank you to Drudge Report, Newsmax, WND, Daily Mail and other publications that picked up my latest column on the demolition of Ronald Reagan’s Chicago home.
As of this morning the column had 11,000 likes and hundreds of thousands of views!!
Sheesh.
…Adding… Michael Reagan, one of the president’s sons, doesn’t care about the Chicago home…
