NY One of 3 on Obama Library’s Short List

Chicago, New York and Honolulu have made the short list to host Barack Obama’s future presidential library.

The Barack Obama Foundation announced Monday that it has selected four universities to compete for the library, culled from an initial list of 13 applications submitted earlier this year. The University of Hawaii, in Obama’s birthplace, Honolulu, made the cut, as did Columbia University in Harlem. The University of Chicago, where Obama used to teach, and the University of Illinois at Chicago round out the list.

The four institutions will now have until December to submit formal, in-depth proposals detailing their vision for the library. The foundation’s board plans to vet those proposals before presenting their recommendations in early 2015 to the president and first lady Michelle Obama. The Obamas will then make the final decision.

Building the library, which will house the repository for Obama’s presidential records and artifacts, is expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars and will serve as a permanent monument to Obama’s legacy.

In its initial “request for qualifications” in March, the foundation laid out the specifications, including more than 20,000 cubic feet of unclassified documents, 804 cubic feet of audio-visual records and 15 thousand cubic feet for artifacts — a space about as large as the Oval Office.

This article appeared in print on page 6 of the September 16th, 2014 edition of Hamodia.